HEUFT at Doemens: "An all-round successful project!"
The Doemens Academy in Gräfelfing, Germany, opened its state-of-the-art filling and packaging technology centre in mid-September 2022, offering students of brewing, beverage and food technology a highly practical training experience. HEUFT had provided the plant, which Doemens also uses for contract filling, with control, inspection and bottle transport systems free of charge. On the occasion of the 130th Doemens anniversary, we look back on the project – and forward together!
There they ensure among other things a gapless all-surface empty bottle inspection, a dynamic conveyor control and a precise full container check. HEUFT experts train the prospective brewmasters and beverage technologists on the running equipment several times a year - and demonstrate to them how efficient in-line quality assurance works in practice.
"When selecting our equipment we had the ambition to build a technical center which not only represented the state of the art but also had to offer maximum flexibility in order to provide our students with the best possible practical training," recalls Dr Werner Gloßner, Managing Director and Head of School at Doemens. "HEUFT is one of the technological leaders in the field of inspection technology. Accordingly it was clear that HEUFT was our first choice."
Precise in-line inspection, harmonic conveyor control
The HEUFT InLine II IS at Doemens has an additional operating mode so that teaching can also take place when there is no filling operation: a specially installed loop in the bottle conveyor allows the empties to run in a circle so that "the empty bottle inspector can also be demonstrated and explained detached from the other units" when the rest of the system is at a standstill, according to Dr Gerrit Blümelhuber, who was responsible for consulting, seminars and services at Doemens as deputy managing director until the end of 2024.
Another highlight is an upstream infeed check that identifies foreign bottles and those that cannot be reliably inspected before they enter the empty bottle inspector. This ensures a brand pure supply of bottles of the correct type. In order to make this as continuous as possible, without large gaps and free of accumulation pressure, the HEUFT synchron II BS conveyor control system gently accelerates the conveyor mechanics in its environment or gently reduces the speed of the single-lane bottle transport if necessary.
Empty bottle inspection and full container check
This happens in exactly the same way upstream of the filling machine so that the empty bottles which the HEUFT InLine II IS has identified as being free of faults enter it without colliding hard or falling over. The HEUFT DELTA-K multi-segment folding diverter rejects all the others upright so that they can be cleaned again and reused after all if necessary. The empty bottle inspector examines the latter in the tightest of spaces in an efficient straight run. High performance cameras together with adaptive LED lighting and HEUFT reflexx A.I. image processing realize a truly full coverage empty bottle inspection from the base to the finish.
The HEUFT PRIME checks the fill level and the presence of the closures of already filled bottles. Thanks to a machine connection the compact device additionally offers valuable locator functions which expose exactly those filling valves and capper heads which have caused the detected fill level and closure faults before they can become serial faults. In addition the HEUFT PRIME which can be equipped with further detection units for label checking or code verification amongst other things takes care of the sampling of the filler and capper. The HEUFT e-mono rejects such samples just as reliably as underfilled or not securely closed bottles. And completely without compressed air!
Professional planning, installation and commissioning
During the implementation of the project "HEUFT was always a reliable partner", summarised Dr Blümelhuber. "Deadlines were met in every respect, the planning and coordination was more than professional as was the entire installation and commissioning." With a maximum filling capacity of 2,000 containers per hour, the checking and inspection equipment at Doemens easily keeps up. It is even designed for speeds that are a good 36 times higher!
For training and teaching purposes, however, the lower speed and the additional operating mode for empty bottle inspection are much more descriptive. "We can now also show our students what the machine can really do. A successful project all round!"
