Seamer Set Up Analyzer-Clearance Gauge

Description

Imagine a tool that will let you set up and troubleshoot your Angelus or Ferrum seamer faster and more accurately than ever before. This tool exists – it is the Quality By Vision Clearance gauge, a quick and accurate way to troubleshoot and set up seamers.

With the rising pressures on companies to increase production speeds and produce better products – accurate double seamer setup has never been more important. Often, companies make due with meeting specifications, often missing issues like double seam springback and variation between heads.

This often means that the slightest changes in incoming materials, such as material thickness, the end design (chuck fit diameter, or curl) or the body (flange length, can height) will cause some heads to suddenly go out of alignment as they were too close to the unacceptable specification.

The clearance gauge is able to not only quickly and accurately set up the seamer, but makes sure that all the seamer heads are performing perfectly as near as possible to the nominal value. This means that seamers will run better, and will need less adjustments. Not only are you saving time – you are also reducing unnecessary seamer stops!

Some canning companies are increasing their seam checks and subsequently have to stop the line more, or use expensive systems like X-rays or online systems to ensure more seams are within tolerance.

Isn’t it a better idea to simply produce better seams rather than checking more often for bad ones?

The software allows you to do predictive maintenance on your seamers before they go out of specifications…

Most of your double seams are going to be good, so you’re actually checking close to 99.99% good products! So, what will you accomplish by checking more cans for seam defects, except slowing down your production.

Today

Today, most companies use feeler gauges (see animation on the right), to try and determine if there is enough distance between the roll and chuck. Of course, this is a very inaccurate procedure and cannot produce accurate results even in the hands of the most experienced operators. Similarly inaccurate methods are used for adjusting the roll height. More often than not, rolls need to be readjusted after the first seam check and as the Ferrum or Angelus seamer (other seamers also apply) warms up.

For vertical (using a seamer roll height gauge) adjustment, most companies use a vertical “pin gauge height” to position the roll and chuck. However, each of these measurements affect one another because of the shapes of the roll and chuck profiles!

In some cases, problems with the seam are often solved by tightening the 2nd operation, whereas the real solution could be that the 1st operation should actually be tightened or even loosened!

The Clearance Gauge

The Clearance Gauge takes a completely different approach to the problem. Instead of focusing on checking seams after the double seam is already closed, the Clearance Gauge helps optimize the can seaming process by taking out variations between the different seamer heads and optimizing the seamer itself!

Today, covering most seamer models, including the popular Angelus 60L, 120/121L and Ferrum seamers, these seamers show a clear and dramatic performance improvements using this gauge.

This tool helps produce much better double seams – faster. Instead of increasing the rate and frequency of seam scope checks. For the first time, you can see what your can seamer is doing before you even start running cans through the line!

Conclusions

Whereas most settings on the double seamer, such as lifter pressure and height are easy to adjust, the roll height off the chuck and the tightness (the lateral distance between the roll and chuck on the high point), which are the most important parameters for the seam setup, are very difficult to set up.

Until today, experienced operators used feeler gauges, but the process was long and very inaccurate – resulting in bad and inconsistent seams, seamers going out of specs quickly and various problems that could not be easily traced. Think of the clearance gauge as a faster feeler gauge that provides accurate results for quick troubleshooting of your Angelus or Ferrum seamer.

Problems in 1st operation were often corrected by 2nd operation settings. This often increased the variation between seamer heads and ultimately resulted in more bad seams and more seamer stops.

The Clearance gauge solves all of these problems by offering an easy solution to seamer optimization and adjustment

Features

The clearance gauge provides tremendous benefits to customers:

• Adjust 1st and 2nd op seaming rolls quickly!
• Optimizes seamer performance!
• Reduce Seamer stop rates!
• Reduce Seamer stop duration!
• Seamer adjustments can be done quickly and easily.
• Locate faulty chuck and roll bearings and shanks!
• Easily see broken and eroded rolls and chucks!

Return on investment for the clearance gauge is extremely quick.\

Specification