Spray tiggers for home care and personal care products are increasingly popular but often cause filler jams, line backups and product leakage. From bent tubes that don’t pump out solution to tubes that completely miss getting inside the bottle allowing product spillage, mating spray triggers to bottles correctly can prevent a multitude of costs. If spray triggers have been jamming your filler, allowing product leakage, or failing to spray product when squeezed, an inspection at the point of insertion can prevent 99% of these errors.
Inspections that can be performed include:
- Bent tube inspection – is the spray tub straight and ready for insertion, which significantly decreases bent tube (no product coming out when trigger squeezed) issues
- Correct insertion inspection – did the tube make it into the bottle correctly – if it didn’t we can reject off the line and make sure the trigger spray doesn’t jam the filler
- Centered insertion inspection – did the tube get inserted in the center of the bottle – this also increases chances of correct mating and spraying function
- Correct mating inspection – did the top of the spray trigger get screwed onto the bottle correctly – if not we can reject off the line and prevent further filler jams
- Leakage inspection – is there foaming and leakage at the point of the trigger meeting the bottle neck coming out of the filler – this prevents spillage and leakage during transport
How These Inspections Work:
Setup will vary a bit depending on your filler, bottles, speeds and concerns. A standard setup that generally works well for correct tube insertion would look like:
- 2 cameras set at 90 degrees to each other and 45 degrees/each to the center line of the bottle neck
- A light to illuminate the bottle neck and spray trigger
- A prox sensor on the filler to trigger imaging at time of insertion
- Blow off for foam on foaming products
- Imaging up to 900 bottles per minute
As bottles are filled, excess foam is blown off the top before the insertion point. The proxy center triggers imaging at the point of insertion, with real-time processing for pass/fail criteria (bent tube, missed insertion, off-center insertion, etc.). As bottles rotate out of the filler, spray triggers and bottles with failing circumstances are rejected off the line. Repeat missing insertion fingers are flagged and alarmed for examination to prevent additional filling issues.
Interested in this system? Get a quote: 314-806-1678
Example images of an insertion inspection
