HEUFT exciter

- an exciting new application for the bottling hall!

The HEUFT exciter is a system ostensibly designed to detect leaking closures on carbonated products in glass or PET containers, particularly beer and soft drinks. Essentially the HEUFT exciter is an ultra-sonic rail that as bottles are guided along it, causes the product to foam creating pressure in the container. In liquids with CO2 ultra-sonic fobbing causes a loss of liquid in badly sealed containers in the closure area. In the case of a PET container leaks can occur in other areas of the bottle for example through a pinhole anywhere in the body of the container.

Soft bottles will cause problems in packers and palletisers. For example, when coming into contact with flight bars or separators, a leaking bottle may cause spoilage of a whole pack, and if allowed as far as the palletiser could damage a whole layer of a pallet. The HEUFT exciter also improves line efficiencies by stabilising the PET container, making it easier to transport along the line. This device is installed post filler to detect even microleakers, creating underfills which will be removed prior to the labeller. As an added advantage the bottles are pressurised to their maximum pressure. Customers state that between a 2.5%- 5% improvement in line efficiency has been achieved due to the improved stability of the bottle.

A ´hard´ container is in the optimum condition not only for transport through the labeller, but also for label application. Bottles filled at an ambient temperature (between 15 to 17 degrees Celsius) could be subject to expansion in the warehouse due to an increase in temperature in the summer months. Bottles that continue to expand in the warehouse cause wraparound label damage at a later date i.e. when it is too late to detect! This will lead to the retail customer returning the goods, or indeed end user customer complaints. Using the HEUFT exciter the PET bottle cannot expand further when in storage, thus preventing the above problem.