Packaging Equipment Spotlight - Automatic Inverting Rinsing Machine

With all of the different products on the market today also come a wide variety of bottles and containers to hold the products. While not all packagers will have a need to clean these containers before introducing product, for a number of different reasons many will clean them. For example, containers that hold food, beverages, medicine or other products that will be ingested, cleaning containers is often a necessity to ensure that no contamination occurs. Contaminants may come from the process of making the bottles, from transportation or from simple storage over time. Regardless of the source, inverting rinsing machines are a good tool for protecting against product contamination.

Automatic inverting rinsing machines use a power conveyor and indexing system to position bottles or other containers under the rinse heads. Once in place, the bottles are clamped and inverted over a rinse basin. While in the inverted position, nozzles will blast air, water or other cleaning liquid into the containers to rinse away dust, debris or other items that may contaminate the product. Once the rinse is completed, containers are returned to the power conveyor system where they typically move on to the filling machine to receive product.

The automatic machines use a Programmable Logic Controller, or PLC, to allow for quick and easy set up of the indexing times, rinse times and other variables that allow the machine to consistently and repeatedly clean groups of bottles. A simple touchscreen interface not only allows the operator to easily change settings and control components when necessary, but also includes a recipe screen so that all relevant data can be saved for any bottle being cleaned. With bottle changeover, some adjustment of indexing, nozzles and clamp may be necessary, but all other settings can be recalled at the recipe screen.

The choice between air and wet rinsing containers is usually just one of preference, and some companies will even use product to rinse containers as well. However, air rinsing machines have one benefit that has made them slightly more popular than the wet rinsing counterparts. When rinsing containers with air, packagers do not have to worry about the waste product that is created by rinsing with water or other cleaning solution.

While the automatic inverting rinsing machines will work with just about any type of container shape, size and material, there are rare occasions when the inverting of a container is simply not efficient or feasible. For these unique containers, a bottle vacuum machine can be built to allow containers to remain on the conveyor while being cleaned. To learn more about any of the container cleaning machines manufactured by Liquid Packaging Solutions, visit the Container Cleaning section of the LPS website or call the LPS offices to speak with a Packaging Specialist today.