Filling & Capping Line Upgrade

FULL DESCRIPTION

The brief. A beverage / liquid-products manufacturer ran a productive S6-class filling and capping line whose mechanics were sound but whose control system had reached the end of its life. Fill volumes drifted between batches, changeovers between container sizes meant manual re-setting, and the original drives and operator terminal were obsolete — a single failed part could take the whole line down with no spares route. The metal was fine; the electronics were the risk.

What we did. Automation Republic re-engineered the line's control system end to end. We stripped out the legacy controller, drives and operator terminal and built a new, fully documented control panel in our in-house panel shop. Volumetric dosing and capping torque moved to closed-loop servo control for repeatable, accurate fills across every head, and no-container / no-cap detection was re-instated to current standards. A new recipe-driven touchscreen HMI replaced the old keypad, so a container or product changeover became a screen tap rather than a manual strip-down — with stored recipes for every SKU.

The platform. We standardised the rebuild on B&R — X20 distributed I/O, ACOPOS servo and POWERLINK real-time Ethernet, engineered in Automation Studio — chosen for premium motion performance and long-term supportability. As always, the architecture is vendor-flexible: the same line can be delivered on Siemens, VEICHI, Rockwell or Mitsubishi to match a customer's installed base. Hygienic-area wiring, IP-rated enclosures and clean cable management were specified for a wash-down food-and-beverage environment.

The result. The line returned to full production on a modern, supportable platform, with fill accuracy tightened and reject rates down. Spares and vendor support are secured for years ahead, the panel is clean, labelled and standards-compliant, and the customer received as-built drawings, PLC and HMI code and operator training at handover. Ongoing support is backed locally and by VPN remote diagnostics, so tuning and updates can be done without a site visit.