Krones inspection technology maintains brewery's high standards

The Pott’s Brewery in Germany is synonymous with swing-stopper bottles, both for their own brews and in contract bottling for beer and beer-based mixed drinks.

Seeking to upgrade the quality of its products, Pott’s has invested in a Linatronic 735 empty-bottle inspector from Krones, combined with a ModulCheck rubber seal monitor, both of which have been integrated into the existing Krones bottling line.

This improved inspection unit ensures the brewery’s 24,000 bph filling line for swing-stopper bottles stays ahead of its time. The line is run in two-shift operation throughout and is used both for filling the brewery’s own beer specialties and for contract bottling.

Rubber seal inspection

The upstream ModulCheck verifies the presence and correct colour of the rubber seals on the swing-stopper bottles’ porcelain heads; it can do this for all positions of the rubber seal. The unit also detects soiling, faded rubber seals and any labels/label residues still adhering to the swing.

The machine does not touch the bottles, and can detect soiling in the area of the porcelain head. It doesn’t consume any wear parts, and can easily be matched to a new variant at changeovers. In addition to the basic ModulCheck unit, further system components have been integrated: an infeed worm that leads the bottles through the machine in single-lane transport, followed by a container-contour detector working with a camera, plus a pusher for rejecting non-conforming containers.

Quality monitoring

The Linatronic 735 contains a variety of modules, such as base inspection, sealing-surface inspection, side-wall inspection or lateral-neck-finish inspection. When inspecting swing-stopper bottles, the Linatronic also inspects the stopper itself: if the clamp-type lower part of the swing-stopper and the porcelain head are on different sides of the neck area, a four-megapixel neck-finish camera will detect this fault, and check the sealing surface as well.

Image caption: When inspecting swing-stopper bottles, the Linatronic also takes a long hard look at the stopper.