atomarc
Diamond
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2009
- Location
- Eureka, CA
I am in the design/planning stages of a small add-on machine that will dispense measured amounts of Pearlite and small amounts of a seed growing medium into plastic bags run on a SPrint Sidepouch bagger.
I have search for items like small UHMW feeders/screw conveyors and devices that can measure and dispense (dump) small quantities of the items mentioned above into the bags but have not found a good match in a parallel industry.
Where should I look..pharmaceutical packaging, food packaging, plastic pellets for injection molding? This will be a low tech project, non-food grade using dry free flowing bulk material and not a high rate of production.
My current idea is to make a dispenser similar to a powder measure for reloading. It will have 4 cavities of the proper volume and will rotate with a pneumatic indexer. One chamber will be at 12 o'clock, exposed to the hopper for filling, one will be at 9 o'clock full and waiting to dump while the 6 o'clock cavity is dumping and the 3 0'clock is waiting to come to the top and fill.
The small pneumatic indexer would rotate the cylinder with the measured cavities 90 degrees each time the conveyor is cycled and a bag is positioned under the discharge funnel.
I have searched for a process that uses a similar dispenser but haven't found the right industry yet.
That's the point of this rant...where would I look? Is my current idea viable?
Stuart
I have search for items like small UHMW feeders/screw conveyors and devices that can measure and dispense (dump) small quantities of the items mentioned above into the bags but have not found a good match in a parallel industry.
Where should I look..pharmaceutical packaging, food packaging, plastic pellets for injection molding? This will be a low tech project, non-food grade using dry free flowing bulk material and not a high rate of production.
My current idea is to make a dispenser similar to a powder measure for reloading. It will have 4 cavities of the proper volume and will rotate with a pneumatic indexer. One chamber will be at 12 o'clock, exposed to the hopper for filling, one will be at 9 o'clock full and waiting to dump while the 6 o'clock cavity is dumping and the 3 0'clock is waiting to come to the top and fill.
The small pneumatic indexer would rotate the cylinder with the measured cavities 90 degrees each time the conveyor is cycled and a bag is positioned under the discharge funnel.
I have searched for a process that uses a similar dispenser but haven't found the right industry yet.
That's the point of this rant...where would I look? Is my current idea viable?
Stuart
