Pharmaceutical Products Assembly & Packaging - Container Closing
DMW Automation engineers and staff personnel took on an automated production challenge from a major pharmaceutical manufacturer to design a system to feed, orient, insert, and assemble a newly designed tablet bottle at a rate of 200 parts per minute and easily did so.
Overview
- Location: Southeast
- Industry: Pharmaceutical
- Products/Services: Tablet Container
- Primary SIC Code: 5122
- Annual Sales: $500 million to $1 billion
- Technology: Continuous Motion
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| Container exit dial and finished product. |
Situation
A major pharmaceutical manufacturer approached DMW Automation to develop a machine to close a new style tablet bottle. The unique challenge with this project was that the solution needed to accept the bottles after tablet filling, feed and orient the container base, insert a desiccant into the container base, and assemble the container base with the tablet filled bottle at a rate of no less than 150 parts per minute. No existing machinery would close this new type of tablet bottle.
Action
DMW Automation personnel met with the customer to evaluate and examine the components of the new tablet bottle and review the requirements of the handling system.
Our solution was a Continuous Motion rotary machine capable of speeds in excess of 200 parts per minute. Our design fed the new tablet bottles into the machine via a combination of conveyor, feed screw, and in-feed dial mechanisms. We identified and integrated third party solutions into our line for feeding and orienting both the desiccant and container base. Our custom automated machine positively inserted the desiccant into the container base, before the container base was positioned over the pre-filled bottle, and then snapped into place by cam-driven tooling. We verified correct placement of the desiccant and container base prior to the completed assembly exiting on a conveyor on its way to a Weiler Labeling Systems pressure-sensitive labeler.
Additionally, we determined the interfaces required for the machine to correctly interact with the customer’s existing upstream and downstream production equipment and designed these interfaces into our machine.
After fabrication and assembly, we conducted Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) with the customer present and received their approval to ship the equipment. We shipped and installed the equipment on site and integrated it with the upstream and downstream production equipment.
Results
Our automated solution met every aspect of the customer’s specifications, was able to run 30% faster than the specified speed, and performed with an overall efficiency of 98.5% at a rate of 150 parts per minute.
For more information about DMW Automation’s custom automation equipment and systems services, please call us at 847-437-0665 or email us at sales@dmwautomation.com.
