An Overview of Auger Powder Filling Machines for Various Applications
Packaging is an essential process for just about any product that is manufactured. Besides ensuring that the product is attractive and appealing to the average consumer, the packaging process ensures filling, sealing and labelling as well. The Auger type powder filling machine is useful to fill many different types of products like semi-solid, powdery and granular materials. This includes a long list of products; however, a few a mentioned here: sugar, salt, spices, coffee, tea, dough, food items, cosmetics, even ready to eat food. It is important this machine has the correct configuration for it to be efficient and effective.
Working of an Auger type Powder Filler
An auger type powder filler several important components, which includes 5 subsystems:
Drive Assembly: This is the motor, transmission and the switching mechanism to start and stop a machine (for the purpose of accurate filling).
Hopper: The hopper is essentially a container where the material is packed. The material is transferred to the tooling from the hopper.
Tooling: This section consists of a system to make accurate settings and configurations to be able to suit the requirements at hand. It consists of an auger agitator, funnels and other filling components to fine-tune the machine depending on the type of material being filled and its application.
Supporting structure: This is a structure that supports the entire system.
Controls: This is the main mechanism to operate the machine.
There are several types of tooling that can be used with an auger machine to ensure desired results and to suit the type of powder.
Self Feed: This is suitable for thick pastes and fine powder that needs to be compressed. For example, flour, cornstarch, baking mix, protein powder, cocoa, glazing compound, etc.
Straight Feed: This type of feed machine is best for flaky or granular products which do not need to be compressed and those that are not free-flowing. For example, psyllium husk, oregano, instant coffee, etc.
Free flow: This tooling for is for the harder granular products that flow easily. For Eg. coffee beans, salt, bread, sugar, sand, etc.
Double knife tooling: This is for soft processed foods. For eg. salads, stews, cooked rice, etc.
Liquid tooling: As the name suggests this is for liquids and creamy materials like oil honey, lotions.
Common Applications
There is a wide range of applications for a powder filling machine. It has an ability to fill several types of powders; The powder is usually a solid formed by either crushing solid substances or grinding. The filling process for powered substances is highly simplified with the help of such machines.
Since the powder is one of the most common substances around there are many applications for an auger type powder filling machine. Powder filling machines are useful in several industries like the food industry, pharmaceutical, farming, personal care, house care and more. It is useful for a wide range of products ranging from protein powder, baking soda, baby powder, coffee, spices and several other products. These products are filled in containers of various shapes, size and volume.
There are different types of automatic powder filling machines to cater to different types of powder since all powders have a different granule size, besides which the level of humidity is also to be considered. The powder filling machines also have different types of mechanism. There are several types of powder filling machines
Net weight filler: As the name suggests, this type of machine will first weight the product prior to filling it in the container. The main advantage of this machine is that it ensures an accurate amount of powder is filled in the container. It is an application to containers of many different shapes and sizes.
Auger filling machine: This type of machine is useful for finer powders since it is specially developed for finer powder. It is very efficient and also prevents dust from entering the container. The fact that this machine is virtually sealed from the atmosphere is the reason why it is so efficient and prevents contamination.