Spindle Machines

Quill cappers or spindle cappers are designed to tighten the cap onto a container or bottle using a pair or multiple pairs of rotating quills or spindles to turn the cap. Quill cappers or spindle cappers are designed with side gripper belts to drive the container through the machine without allowing the container to spin and turn as the cap is being tightened and spindles that have gripper wheels a the end of the spindles. The gripper wheels at the end of the spindles are the only parts of the spindle capper that make contact with the cap. The gripper wheels are made of rubberized plastic and are available with different stiffness or durometer of plastic. For spindle cappers with multiple pairs of spindles, the spindles of subsequent spindle pairs have a progressive decreasing gap between the gripper wheels. The subsequent spindles are designed to tighten the cap more as the container progresses through the machine.

Spindle cappers within this category and keyword are automatic machines, though the operation of a spindle cap lends itself to a semi-automatic machine. (For semi-automatic spindle cappers see Cappers / Semi-Auto.) To make a spindle capper automatically apply and tighten caps, the spindle capper must have a cap feeding device, which will place the cap on the container prior to the container entering the zone where the caps are tightened by the spindles. Often, a vibratory bowl and a cap chute are integrated to a spindle capper to orient the cap and feed the cap down the cap chute. The cap chute is designed to hold the cap at the end of a chute and as the container passes underneath the chute, the lip of the container catches the cap and the cap rests on top of the container. By integrating a vibratory bowl and a cap chute to a semi-automatic spindle capper, the spindle capper can operate automatically.

Spindle cappers are more flexible than chuck cappers. Spindle cappers have adjustments for the height of the container, for the distance between the gripper wheels (for the cap) and the gripper belts (for the container), for the gap between the gripper belts, and for the gap between the gripper wheels. Spindle cappers can be adjusted to handle all container sizes within a given range without change parts (except for the cap feeding mechanism) so long as the caps are circular. However, spindle cappers are limited in the maximum speed.