Auger Fillers for Packing Powders and Granules
If you want to automate packing of powders or small granule products, you’re likely to benefit from integrating an Auger Filler into your production line.
The right Auger Filler and tooling for you will depend on the dose size and product specification / characteristics. Wedderburn have a range of Auger Fillers with different hopper sizes and various attachment options to suit your business and offer personal consultation to determine the best solution for your business.
What are Auger Fillers and how do they work?
Auger Fillers are engineered for dosing powders or fine granules.
They work on a highly accurate measured revolution system to control the target weight. The dispensed amount is consistent with the amount of revolutions the auger spins, which means between batch to batch its likely small adjustments will be required. Servo Motors are most common for Auger Fillers to measure the required dose. Some units can have scale feedback so the Auger Fillers can automatically adjust for product inconsistency, although the Wedderburn Auger Filler range has a very simple and quick adjustment method through the operators touch screen.
What is meant by Product Characteristics?
A powder product is considered free-flowing when its particles are not cohesive. Examples of this are granulated sugar or table salt, which ‘flow freely’ when dispensed. Adding extra pressure usually will not compact these types of products, and they usually don’t hold their shape when manipulated.
A powder product is considered non-free-flowing when the particles are cohesive. Examples of this are brown sugar or powdered milk, which tend to hold their shape when manipulated and can be compacted under pressure. Free-flowing product easily falls with the force of gravity while non-free-flowing product needs to be ‘helped along’ during the dispensing because of its compacting/binding properties.
Understanding the difference between free-flow or non-free-flow is vital to the success of any Auger Filler project. In particular, it directly affects the type of tooling required and programming configuration to properly dispense the powder product accurately.
Will an Auger Filler work for our business?
It’s important that when considering an Auger Filler for your business, you consider each of your product types and how many weight variants are required. Ideally Auger Fillers are designed to do larger production runs of the same product and weight to give you best saving of labour.
If you have many products with multiple target pack weights then an Auger Filler may require a variation of tooling options to fit your needs
How do you fill bulk product into the Auger Fillers?
Our WPAF14L Auger Filler is a benchtop model suitable for smaller production sizes and target weights (150 – 200g maximum depending on product density), these units are normally manually filled by the operator.
Our WPAF25L and WPAF50L are our larger units for up to 1.5-2kg, these need to be filled by a Screw Conveyor.
What are Screw Conveyors?
Moving bulk powder is a hard and back breaking task. Screw Conveyors simply move large volumes of powders fast and efficiently. Available in many sizes, the output is measured in m3 / hour.
There are many features like covers with windows and fixed mesh screens, these units are an important part of any powder filling system. It’s important to note that when installed as part of full system, these units require extra available floor area.
