Fillers - Paste Filling Machines

Filler Paste Equipment – Paste fillers, or paste filling equipment, are designed to fill paste into glass, plastic, or other types of containers. Paste fillers use either pistons or other positive displacement mechanisms to feed the proper amount of paste into the container. The term paste filler can be misleading. Because of the operation of paste fillers, paste fillers can also be used to fill other products besides paste including salsas and other products with particulates. Paste fillers can be designed for semi-automatic or automatic operation. Semi-automatic paste fillers require operators to present containers below the paste filling nozzle and to trigger the operation of the paste filler. Automatic paste fillers automatically index containers below the paste filling nozzles and trigger paste filling operation without any required operator input. Automatic paste fillers are often integrated into fully automatic production and packaging lines. Paste fillers can also be designed to fill one or many containers at once. The most common type of paste fillers are piston paste fillers. Piston paste fillers utilize the draw back of a piston to pull product from a product hold tank into the piston. Once the piston is full, the rotary drum valve on the intake / discharge end of the piston rotates to direct product towards the paste filling nozzle. The rotary drum valve is used to connect the piston to either the product hopper or to the paste filling nozzle. (The size of the opening in the drum valve is often a good indication of the largest size particulate that can be process by the paste filler without degrading the particulate.) As the piston pushes forward, the product within the piston is push out of the piston, through the paste filling nozzle, and into the container. Once the piston is empty, the rotary drum valve rotates to connect the piston to the product hopper. The piston paste filler can then complete another cycle to fill another container (or group of containers). The maximum volume a particular machine can fill is determined by the volume of the piston. Pistons on a piston paste filler can be ???short stroked?? (not pulled back the entire way) to fill a smaller volume of paste. (???Short stroking?? a piston provides accurate fills to approximately 10% of maximum piston volume.) Also, different size pistons can be outfitted to a piston paste filler to provide different fill capacities for the machine.