Founded in 1920 as part of the Carnation Co. to produce malted milk powder and other dry mixes, the Lake Country Foods facility went through several ownership changes in the past 20 years. The last one in 1993 resulted in the formation of Lake Country Foods, which is a privately held company specializing in the contract manufacturing of malted milk powder, hot cocoa mix and bakery mixes. It is a major packager for a number of large companies including Slim-Fast products for the Unilever Co. The plant has three packaging lines running standup bags, plastic jars and cans and canisters, respectively. The newest line, which was installed last fall, runs 401- and 502-diameter spiral-wound composite cans from Sonoco that range in height from 4 to 8.5 in. and contain from 12 oz to 2.5 lb of product. The cans are made from two plys of recycled paperboard with an inner barrier layer, and the top is sealed at the factory with Sonoco's Ultraseal® peelable foil membrane that includes a pull tab for easy removal.Get more news about Protein Powder Jar Filling,you can vist our website!

was running a 401 can containing 12 oz of Slim-Fast product at a speed of 180 cans/min. “I've worked with Rich May, president of Richpak Machinery, Inc. for a number of years, and he gave us some good suggestions for equipment to include on the new line,” says Tom Gnewuch, vp of operations. “In particular, he suggested we talk to All-Fill, Inc.about the filler and checkweigher and to Confab Systems, which supplied all of the conveyors on the entire line, including the cable conveyors, twisters and the table-top conveyor, as well as the accumulation table after the filler. Confab also provided system integration and all of the controls for the complete line, as well as mechanical installation and startup assistance.”

Cans are received stacked nine layers high on a pallet, and a depalletizer pushes one layer at a time onto an unscrambler that single-files them onto a cable conveyor that transports them overhead to the filling line. From there, they go down through twisting chutes from Confab that set them on the conveyor feeding the filler. The plant has four twisters, two for each can size, and gates at their inlets are manually opened or closed depending on what size can is being run. Air jets located along the twisters blow any dust out of the cans as they descend. Because the cans are provided with Sonoco's foil Ultraseal membrane across their tops, product is filled into the open bottom. Therefore, the chute is designed to place the cans upside-down on the flat conveyor chain with the open bottom facing up.

The canisters are then conveyed to the 18-head All-Fill rotary filler, where a helical feedscrew meters them into the infeed starwheel, which in turn, meters them into the filler turret. A sensor monitors containers on the conveyor to the filler, and shuts the machine off if no cans are present. The conveyor continues past the front of the filler and picks up the filled cans as they discharge.

Eighteen funnels are mounted around the top of the rotating filler turret and discharge into the containers that travel synchronously beneath them. Sealing pads at the bottoms of the funnels sit on top of the cans and create a tight seal for dust control. The dry powder discharges from an overhead tank into a hopper containing a rotating auger that discharges the powder into the funnels as they pass beneath it. The proper weight of product in a container is achieved by coordinating the respective rotating speeds of the turret and the auger. The filled cans discharge through a star wheel onto the same conveyor that delivered them to the filler.