Reliably differentiating swing tops: the HEUFT LGX makes it possible!

A nostalgic design, the distinctive noise when opening and the practical reclosability feature: swing top bottles are enjoying increasing popularity. Detecting them in a crate and clearly assigning them to one´s own production bottles present standard returned empties inspectors with immense problems. HEUFT SYSTEMTECHNIK GMBH has developed a device with the HEUFT LGX which can reliably identify swing top bottles therefore not only guaranteeing that the containers supplied are of the correct brand but also that downstream machines are protected.

However where is the challenge?  Why are swing top bottles so demanding as regards the inspection of returned empties?  For this we will take a closer look at the most frequently asked questions which can arise in this connection:

Is it a swing top at all or just a foreign object that is a piece of a neck label?

Difficulties often occur at the unpacker when bottles with swing tops enter the production flow for conventional containers.  Therefore the corresponding cases have to be rejected.  However the supposed swing top often emerges as the remains of a label - efficiency restraints which can certainly be forgotten with the HEUFT detection.

It becomes really interesting when one has to differentiate between the swing top bottles of one´s own production and those of other competitors:

Are they suitable for one´s own production?  Is the closure in place or is it hanging down?

For this the bottles provide several distinctive features such as the bottle height, finish, closure logo and the colour of the rubber seal.  All these features are analysed and collected by means of optical and acoustic inspections.  Due to the HEUFT fuzzy logic, the HEUFT LGX can state very precisely afterwards, using a specially defined algorithm whether the bottles which have just been examined are suitable or not.

Conventional devices cannot achieve such precision and high performance when inspecting crates with swing top bottles.  Good that there is an exception:  the HEUFT LGX.