Case Study: Morrison Tobacco Can Stacking for Sleeving Custom Drive Assembly

INDUSTRY: Tobacco | OPERATING SPEED: 250 CPM | CONTAINER: Chewing Tobacco

Customer Container Handling Challenge: This customer needed a system to stack 5 lanes of product prior to a sleever that would eliminate mechanical constraints, manual processes, and give them flexibility and control. Floor space was a concern.

Morrison Solution: Our team designed a system to accept 5 lanes of chewing tobacco cans from a customer-provided vertical, gravity fed twist chute.

The containers are fed into the mini stacked feed screws via plastic “guides” and travel in a horizontal direction as the synchronized screws control the containers. After being pitched to match the platform conveyor, a dead plate terminates and the containers transition to a lug conveyor.

For a smooth transition and quality stacking of the containers, Morrison designed a multi-level starwheel that accepts the stack on the first lug and squares up the containers, creating a perfect stack ready for the sleeving process.

Implementing servo drives to control each independent operation, our controls team added a pneumatic container stop at the beginning of the Morrison system in order to ensure enough backlog is present. UL certified controls were integrated and provided on these systems by the Morrison controls team.

Complete with full guarding, an access door was added to clear out product in the event of a jam in the chute. Six of these compact systems were delivered to meet demand, and they fit into a tight floor space.

Construction: Stainless Steel