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US 12,454,380 B2Granted
Method of operating a packaging line and packaging line suitable therefor
AssigneeMultivac Sepp Haggenmueller SE & Co. KG
InventorsDaniel Gropper, Pascal Schilling
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
In order to avoid a decrease of cycle frequency of a packaging machine within a packaging line caused by a previous interruption of a slicer's on-slice operation, e.g. during its loading, special residual buffers for additional buffering of portions compared to normal operation may be released by a controller shortly before the interruption. For example, non-buffer positions for portions on buffer bands may be released, or portion positions on non-buffer bands may be released.
Claims20
A method for operating a packaging line comprising:
- a packaging machine having an infeed station in which a portion is stored on or in a package;
- a single-track or multi-track slicing machine for cutting slices from a product calibre, including a discharge unit with a plurality of conveyor belts one behind the other for the slices, wherein the discharge unit is operable to form portions that each include a plurality of the slices placed at least partially on top of one another;
- and
- a horizontal infeed unit downstream of the slicing machine in a direction of travel for buffering and feeding the portions to the infeed station by a plurality of conveyor bands, wherein, of the plurality of conveyor bands, those arranged within a buffer route and equipped with controllable servo drives comprise buffer bands;
- wherein the discharge unit and the infeed unit together form a transport route for the portions, and where the method comprises:
- providing a controller configured to perform the following steps:
- operating the slicing machine in normal operation in which a cutting capacity is such that per track a number of portions present on the transport route corresponds at most to a number of deposit positions present in the buffer route for one portion each, the deposit positions being buffer positions;
- and
- in a case of a foreseeable interruption of cutting operation of the slicing machine, in a preliminary period before the interruption, temporarily operating the slicing machine with a cutting capacity which is higher in comparison to the cutting capacity during the normal operation, that per track a number of portions present in the transport route reaches a special number which is higher by a predetermined special difference than the number of buffer positions on the buffer route.
6 more elements
A packaging line for production and packaging of portions, each comprising one or more slices separated from a product calibre, the packaging line comprising:
- a packaging machine having an infeed station in which a portion can be stored on or in a package;
- a single-track or multi-track slicing machine for cutting slices from the product calibre, including a discharge unit with multiple conveyor bands for the slices, the conveyor bands comprising a portioning band, which is configured to receive several slices at least partially on top of one another to form a portion;
- a horizontal infeed unit downstream of the slicing machine in a direction of travel for buffering and feeding the portions to the infeed station by a plurality of conveyor bands, wherein, of the plurality of conveyor bands of the infeed unit, those arranged within a buffer route and equipped with controllable servo drives comprise buffer bands, and wherein the discharge unit and the infeed unit together form a transport route for the portions;
- and
- a controller configured to:
- operate the slicing machine in normal operation in which a cutting capacity is such that per track a number of portions present on the transport route corresponds at most to a number of deposit positions present in the buffer route for one portion each, the deposit positions being buffer positions;
- and
- in a case of a foreseeable interruption of cutting operation of the slicing machine, in a preliminary period before the interruption, temporarily operate the slicing machine with a cutting capacity which is higher in comparison to the cutting capacity during the normal operation, so that per track a number of portions present in the transport route reaches a special number which is higher by a predetermined special difference than the number of buffer positions on the buffer route.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.