B.V. was founded in 1959 in Schiedam, The Netherlands. With a crucial patent in flow-wrapping, it quickly became a large manufacturer of high quality horizontal bag form, fill and seal machines for packaging of chocolate and bar products, biscuits, candies and pharmaceutical products. Their PACK-6 flow wrapper was seen by the market a as a de-facto standard.
In 1985 it became Klöckner Tevopharm, and in 2003 it was taken over by Bosch.
The Dutch company has about 175 employees generating annual sales of approximately 30 million Euros. With over 5,000 flow wrapper machines sold, it is worldwide active, with approximate turnover of 35% in Europe, 35% in North America, and 30% in Asia and the rest of the world. Their product range from stand alone applications with single servo systems till full servo controlled, turn-key multiflow wrappers, including distribution, storage and multilane flow wrapping, grouping, and secondary packaging systems, to serve the world's largest food manufacturers.
Due to the changes in consumer behaviour, requiring smaller portions of food and a wider variety, and the stricter hygiene demands, an increased interest in flexible automated packaging productions lines operations will boost future demand.
The first machine fromTevopharm that is build around the PLCopen Motion Control Function Block Library is the PACK-300CA Flow Wrapper. This machine is capable of packing up to 2,000 products per minute.
Where the PACK-300CA is the first Tevopharm machine to be equipped with the new control system, the other full servo-based machines PACK-200 and PACK-2000 will follow shortly.
The PACK-300CA contains three servo drives steering the following functionality:
1. The product infeed chain (M1)
2. The film feeding and alignment (M2)
3. The cross sealing part (M3)
To control these servomotors a 'virtual line shaft' is used in the controller. This virtual line shaft operates the machine just like a traditional mechanical line shaft, while adding the flexibility which the mechanical version is lacking. All servomotors are coupled to this virtual line shaft via the control software.
The infeed servo has a one-to-one relationship to the virtual line shaft, and can therefore be seen as the physical representation of the virtual line shaft. The second motor follows the virtual line shaft, while keeping the print on the film aligned with the rest of the process. The third motor is coupled to the virtual line shaft via a specially designed profile. This profile assures that the sealing and cutting of the film is done at the right place and with the right speed.
Controller & Architecture:
Basically all packaging machines have three basic control functions:
1. HMI, the Human MachineInterface
2. PLC, the logic part of the control
3. MC, the Motion Control functionality
Normally each function can have different suppliers, especially on request from the end users, making a wide mix possible. With the PACK-300CA, these functions are merged. Integration into one platform, like PC based control, can be possible. However certain software constraints, as well as ability to serve different customer expectations on the HMI part, makes a preference for the integration of PLC and MC into one platform, and the HMI on another one.
Advantages of Packaging Machines: