Thinking Out of, and About, the Box

After a century of tube-fillers and cartoners, what's new at IWK?

-- Richard Mandel

The latest Cartopac machine, the SC4, is state-of-the-art in packaging machinery -- a clean, sleek, ergonomic design. The rotary carton pick-up system takes a folded carton blank from the feeder stack, pre-opens the box with a counter suction arm and mechanical finger, then places it gently into carrier fingers, even at blurring speeds of up to 450 cartons per minute. The fingers square up the sides and securely hold the cartons on the transport chain, ready for the product loading and carton closing stations. The SC4 can operate at this high rate on a continuous output basis, cartoning complex combination packs, bottles, blisters, tubes and kits.

The Cartopac cycloid mechanism, which combines a rotary carton feed, opposing vacuum pre-break, and a mechanical placement system that squares the carton before placing it on the transport.

IWK Verpackungstechnik GmbH manufactures the SC4 and other packaging equipment in Germany, where they were first founded in 1872. Their first large order for machines to fill and close tubes was from the Dutch Colonial Minister, in 1893. Since then, the company has produced key equipment in the packaging industry, including today's lines of tubefillers, cartoners, tray packing systems and blisterpacking machinery. IWK machines have been in the US since the early 1950s, establishing a group about 14 years ago in New Jersey to manufacture tube fillers (presently, the TFS10), a product with high demand in the dentrifice, cosmetic and pharmaceutical markets.

Jim Slamon, applications engineer for IWK Packaging Machinery, Inc., Fairfield, NJ, recently spoke with Designfax to lend insight as to how IWK has maintained its role.

DFX: With manufacturing sites in Germany and the US (as well as India and Brazil), where is the actual design work handled?

JS: Design is done at our German headquarters. We have a full design department -- half of the department deals with customer orders and customizing machines to each customers' specifications. The other half are working on the next generation of machines, making whatever improvements that can be made.

The Cartopac SC4 shown with the optional leaflet transfer system.

Most of the machines delivered are customized from the original design in some way. We take a base machine design and build it to the customer's needs. Many of the changes are from our options list -- items like leaflet feeders or coupon inserters. All of the components are largely standardized and are essentially interchangeable between machines.

DFX: So has there actually been a completely new machine in the market in recent years?

JS: In a basic sense, a cartoning machine today has the same functions as a cartoning machine of 30 years ago. The new machines have better drives, better controls. The market is about whose machine can maintain high speed, work the smoothest, mar the package the least, and do this for three shifts, 365 days-a-year, for years at a time.

Many components are unchanged -- components like the grippers and the vacuum suction cups. You want your customers to get wear-and-tear parts without having to send to Europe, and we keep a complete set of necessary spare parts here. But the machine should be as user-friendly as possible. Maintenance is a big part of that. While no machine of this complexity is truly maintenance-free, it is the ease of maintenance and the ease of finding people who can maintain a complex machine, that is the objective. Should trouble occur, our machines have been equipped with a built-in interface that directly communicates online with engineers in Germany. For example, if a machine in the US suffers a system crash, engineers at the German home office can go into the unit's computer, identify exactly the circumstances that caused the crash -- perhaps an overload, perhaps a misfeeding carton, perhaps somebody hit an E-stop -- and they can immediately determine through the computer what the problem is and how
to fix it.

The TFS 10 fills and closes up to 60 tubes per minute

The machines are mostly modular. The downtime in production lines that use these machines is incredibly expensive --when you're packing hundreds of cartons of toothpaste per minute, you can't have this machine down and waiting for a service engineer to "arrive any minute." So most of the machine is designed so that projected problem areas are readily swapped out. The machine's PC computer, for instance, can be exchanged in a matter of minutes and the machine can be rebooted. The same is true with the cycloid, the part that does the carton pickup/pre-break/pre-open. Again, the idea is to keep the machine up and running as much as possible.

DFX: Since you are an applications engineer on this side of the Atlantic, are you exchanging drawing files electronically with the home office?

JS: In most cases for validation with customers, yes, we've got a good handle on that. We've made great strides, because of e-mail communication tools like validation paperwork development, and CAD carton drawings that go directly from the designer to the customer's desk. Even photos of a tricky product transfer can be exchanged. Virtual engineering meetings are also common for us. Our design department not only uses computers to design a machine's components, they also can run an animation of the machine's packaging process, before any assembly takes place on the factory floor. This reduces the trial-and-error of development, and speeds getting our product out the door.

DFX: Do you ever have need to fly over to the IWK headquarters in Germany?

JS: I travel to the headquarters and factory in Karlsruhe at least once a year -- more often if there is a machine check-out to help with. It is important to get over and see new developments, to talk with the engineers. There are always interesting projects in various stages to explore in the factory. We often bring back new ideas or solutions that w can relay to our customers. Conversely, we supply the German engineers with feedback on what the US market is looking for. The American market is very important for IWK. The input from our (New Jersey) office helps their understanding of the American market. Also, there is often a German team visiting here, traveling around the country and meeting customers. It is part of our philosophy that we make face-to-face contact with our customers. Design and project review meetings are great examples. We feel that efficient communication is basic to successful projects -- it's not just the machine that a customer buys.

For more information:

Circle 440 - IWK Packaging Machinery, Inc., or connect directly with their website via the Online Reader Service Program at http://www.1rs.com/004df-440