CASE HISTORY
 |
The Sirius NM2002S and NP2002S line machines. These servo machines fill and carton tubes at 200 tubes per minute.
|
Cliff Miller, president of Andrew M. Martin Co. (Gardena, CA), a tube filler, likes to think of his company as a problem solver. “One critical application that we designed comes to mind—a mascara product that had to have a wand inside of the tube, which made the tube very hard to fill,” Miller recalls. “What we had to do to fill it was put the filling nozzle between the wand and the sidewall of the tube, which was tricky.”
All seven pieces of tube-filling equipment at Andrew Martin are manufactured by Norden Machinery (Branchburg, NJ). “We like their equipment because there’s so much we can do with it,” says Miller. “With Norden machinery, we have the ability to do nitrogen fills, which means we can get rid of the oxygen in the tube and replace it with nitrogen.”
Some machines are mechanically controlled for initial tube filling, but Norden also has machines that are computer controlled, which allows them to do complex-profile filling. “Profile filling is done with servomotors, which allow pumping to be very precise,” Miller explains. “It lifts the actual tube into the filling nozzle, and allows us to do some critical processes. For example, we sometimes have to fill a tube with a very heavy silicon-based scar cream. It’s pretty close to the consistency of honey. It usually creates stringing problems, meaning that if you pull it between your fingers, it creates a long string of material that doesn’t let go. So it makes the filling nozzle hard to separate from the product.”
With a servo-driven unit, Andrew Martin can actually speed up the pump as it is closing the valve, and by doing so, it snaps the product away from the nozzle. With Norden’s servo-driven machinery, the tube-filling company has many different filling options, including how the nozzle opens and closes and how fast the product will pump out.
 |
Norden’s robotic infeed, shown here in close-up, is able to maintain speeds with faster machines.
|
Over the years, Norden has come up with machinery that can handle many innovative features, like designer seals or shaped seals with cutouts or holes.
“At Andrew Martin, we fill a tube that goes down to a half of a cubic centimeter, which is so small it’s hard to even see,” says Miller. “We have to use a tiny filling nozzle under 0.04 in. diam. The Norden machine gives us this capability.”
Tristan Wallack, the after sales and marketing manager for Norden Machinery, says that one of its value-added services is a full validation package for pharmaceutical customers. “You have to account for any part on the machine that comes into contact with the product,” Wallack maintains. “So the history of any metal parts that could touch the product have to be researched.”
Another of Norden’s innovations is robotic infeeding for the faster machines. “The lower-speed machines are hand fed, but no one knew how to take the next step up to feeding the faster-running machines,” says Wallack.“What we originally did was work with a robotic application company for the feeding mechanism, and we handled our own computer programming to customize the process for our machines.”
Andrew Martin recently acquired a new 600S machine, one of the first filling companies in the United States to get the latest machine. “It’s a great machine, so I now have three of them here,” Miller maintains. “We run our machines five days a week, 24 hours per day, so we have to have strong, durable equipment.”
David Gaines is a freelance writer based in Nevada City, CA.
