Why Pack Expo Tops Favorite Packaging Trade Shows List

Frenzy of sights, sounds, and conveyor sales highlight PMMI event

For a conveyor manufacturer in the USA like Volkmann, there are dozens of trade shows where it would be appropriate to exhibit our automated conveyor systems. After all, our pneumatic vacuum conveyor equipment transfers bulk materials and ingredients in hundreds of food, chemical, pharmaceutical, additive manufacturing, and other types of industrial facilities worldwide. We could be exhibiting at any of the excellent events serving any of these industries, and we often do. But as a conveyor company with a proven track record in designing and manufacturing automated conveyors for packaging applications, we tend to look forward to Pack Expo with a little more anticipation than other trade shows.

Pack Expo is organized by the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute (PMMI), the Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies. Since packaging machines have traditionally taken up large spaces and large capital equipment budgets, it was always a challenge for the manufacturers to properly showcase their machinery in operation, and for customers to see these large, impressive feats of engineering up close before purchasing. Pack Expo became known as a destination where processors and other customers could see, hear, touch, use, and test a variety of packaging machinery and equipment, live and in action.

At a time when a number of manufacturers think twice about running their machines at trade shows, or about exhibiting altogether, we know that attendees expect the inspiring sights and clamoring sounds of a packaging line in operation – and so do we. Given the effort and cost involved in attending an event today, a trade show booth needs to offer a tangible, tactile experience beyond watching a video. To provide a firsthand experience, we setup a fully operating pneumatic vacuum conveyor for packaging at our booth to simulate how it would work in a customer’s plant.

This recirculating setup demonstrates how powders, pellets, granules, mixtures, blends, and other bulk materials are gently transferred by our Volkmann vacuum conveyor from one point, such as a mixer discharge, tablet press, day bin, or hopper, to another point, such as to a VFFS machine, stick pack machine, or tablet counter at the filling and packaging lines.

When conveying to a packaging line, preserving the quality and integrity of the material throughout the process also ranks as a top priority. Our gentle process safeguards particle shape and size and keeps mixtures together in exacting proportions without generating heat or dust.

The conveyor design simplicity and ease of maintenance are most apparent when cleaning is needed. In fact, we disassemble and reassemble the conveyors right in the trade show booth. For contract packagers and others who often need to switch from one product to another, this versatility has become one of the many reasons that attendees learning about conveyors for packaging make sure to see us at the show.

See us at Pack Expo Las Vegas on Sept. 11 – 13, booth #8260.

If you cannot attend this year, see us in our Bristol, Pa. headquarters and see a fully operating pneumatic vacuum conveying system in our test lab. Schedule your tour or test here.

Rotary Valves for Powder Allow Continuous Transfer

For Non-Stop Discharge of Bulk Solids, Try Volkmann Rotary Airlock Valves

Experienced engineers with expertise in dry bulk material processing know that we design and manufacture pneumatic vacuum conveyors to transfer powders and other bulk solids – safely, gently, and efficiently. But even veteran, long-tenured process engineers may not know that we also design and manufacture rotary valves for powder processing.

Why? Standard pneumatic vacuum conveying systems transfer powder intermittently in separate suction and discharge cycles. This is the best practice for many bulk material transfer applications. However, some applications require a continuous discharge of bulk solids to supply a reliable, non-stop flow of material to the mixer, hopper, or other vessel. In these automated conveying systems, a rotary valve allows the material to flow uninterrupted.

We tested the best rotary valves available at the time and realized if we wanted to feel confident in the performance, we needed to design our own. A rotary airlock valve needs to establish a leak-proof, air-tight seal between the vacuum receiver upstream and the hose or piping at the discharge. This creates the proper pressure differential that allows the material to flow freely around the rotor and out the discharge. A number of those we considered either had trouble maintaining the seal over time or would wear faster than we felt was acceptable.

Our proprietary Volkmann design uses 100 percent stainless steel in product contact areas as standard – just like our conveyors – as part of our overall commitment to safety and hygiene. In fact, these continuous vacuum conveying systems are running in food, nutrition, and pharmaceutical plants, often 24/7. The valve seals and connections fit seamlessly as a companion with our pneumatic vacuum conveyors and they are easy to take apart for quick cleaning. For hazardous situations with ignitable powders or combustible dust, our rotary valves are ATEX-certified as explosion-proof, just like our conveyors.

No matter the conditions or process requirements, we’ll figure out exactly the right conveying solution. Question about your process? Click here and our sales engineers will give you a call.

BMW, GKN Additive Manufacturing, and Volkmann Drive 3D Printing Research

Three, Key Lessons Learned in Metal Powder Transfer and Recovery

3D printing companies and others driving the rise of additive manufacturing have been quietly investing huge amounts of resources into learning about the 3D printing process and fine-tuning it to produce better quality metal parts more efficiently and at less cost. A number of key players in AM have been researching, developing and testing a wide variety of materials and equipment to build a knowledge base of metal powder properties, quality control standards, part testing and inspection guidelines, and best practices.

BMW Group, the global car manufacturer, and GKN Additive, the global additive manufacturing arm of GKN Powder Metallurgy, joined Volkmann, and several other companies offering a high level of engineering expertise, in a unique project designed to create the technology needed to advance metallic 3D printing to the point where it can be integrated into conventional production lines and expedite the manufacturing process. It’s called IDAM, the “Industrialization and Digitization of Additive Manufacturing (AM) for Automotive Series Processes” and it’s been in continuous action since March 27, 2019.

Four years later, we’ve all learned a lot about metal part manufacturing using 3D printing. Here are three of the key lessons:

It’s proven that nearly the entire production process for 3D printing can be automated from start to finish. Layering and building the metal part had been envisioned as an automated process from the outset. But now it’s understood that consistently producing high quality, 3D printed metal parts requires automating as many ancillary steps as possible to safeguard the metal powders from contamination and to safeguard workers from toxic exposure. This means automatically transferring metal powders from storage containers, removing unused metal powders from the build chamber, and performing secondary finishing tasks like deburring and cleaning. Manual tasks like powder handling that put both workers and powdered materials at risk can be eliminated.

We’ve also proven that even minimal amounts of moisture can negatively affect the metal powder and alter its properties. This requires the humidity level in the facility to be carefully monitored and metal powders to be sealed off from the plant environment during storage and transfer to the printer. Otherwise, the once fine particles can agglomerate into small clumps that don’t flow well during transfer and cause imperfections like pores and burrs if allowed to flow through to the printer. To maintain metal powder quality even in changing environmental conditions, Volkmann GmbH has developed an inline vacuum dryer that automatically removes the excess moisture and returns the materials to the correct moisture content. This powder drying system can be used to dry virgin materials fresh from the metal powder supplier and to prepare excess or unused material for reuse.

Given our commitment to recycling, waste reduction, and efficiency, we’re very proud to have developed the ability to automatically extract unused metal material from the build chamber, screen it for agglomerates, dry it, and return the on-spec powders to the printing process or to storage for reuse. We’re even merging recycled and virgin material in different ratios depending on the printed metal part to further promote material reuse. This sustainability innovation alone can save huge amounts of money in material costs.

Four years ago, we could not have anticipated all of the engineering achievements that would result from our work as an IDAM partner, especially in an industry evolving as rapidly as additive manufacturing. But the lessons we’ve learned and the knowledge we’ve shared with other AM manufacturing leaders are proving essential to advancing the growth of 3D printing as a viable process worldwide.

You can see our latest achievements at RAPID + TCT and Formnext: the PowTReX metal powder transfer and recovery system and DPS automated depowdering station – learn more here.

For more about the complete metal powder process at BMW here.

Our pneumatic vacuum conveying technology has developed quite a loyal following within powder and bulk processing circles over many decades and now it’s getting attention outside the process industries. More and more engineers want to know how to move products and materials of all kinds as fast, safely, and efficiently as possible and they see our approach as a novel way to automate a wide range of material handling tasks and solve staffing, maintenance, and other pressing issues. Eric Lanke, the host of the prestigious Fluid Power Forum podcast, for example, recently read an article about our conveyors and invited us to explain how pneumatic vacuum technology works, where it’s currently being used, and why engineers are taking a closer look at its potential applications.

Our own Bill Fucich, senior sales engineer, explained to Eric and his listeners that the rapidly growing awareness about our conveyors is due to its key advantages versus other ways to move material from one point to another. Bill cites the conveyor’s enclosed nature that protects ingredients like sugar and salt from contamination from exposure to the plant environment (and protects workers from exposure to dust); the explosion-proof design that allows safe installation in Class I and Class II hazardous environments; the ability to quickly disassemble the entire receiver with no tools for cleaning; and to work without any electricity or rotating parts.

Bill describes how the vacuum conveyor works in detail and how our vacuum pump uses the venturi principle to create enough suction via compressed air to transfer difficult materials with high bulk densities like copper and stainless steel as well as materials with very low bulk densities like fumed silica. Discussing key applications, Bill highlighted the role of our PowTReX conveying system in the growing additive manufacturing – 3D printing industry. The PowTReX conveyor transfers metal powders to 3D printers, then captures, screens, and returns the powdered metal to storage or to a hopper for reuse.

Bill also explained the differences between our Volkmann PPC Series conveyors for pharmaceutical and other hygienic applications and the Volkmann VS Series conveyors, which he calls “the workhorse” for transferring chemicals and almost anything else that doesn’t require cGMP compliance.

But it’s the engineering challenges that Bill calls the sweet spot of our operation – and we all agree that we’re at our most innovative when challenged with an application that nobody else wants to touch.

Listen to the podcast episode here.

 

Secret to Safe, Smooth Conveying is Volkmann

A maintenance technician for a major food manufacturer who took on a new job as a chief engineer with a different major food manufacturer asked us about converting the entire material transfer process from a series of open belt conveyors and bucket elevators to our pneumatic vacuum conveying systems. “After so many years using your conveyors, coming over to this plant seemed like it was in the stone age,” said the chief engineer, who signed a non-disclosure and cannot be named. “For a sanitary plant, it was a recall waiting to happen. Replacing everything with Volkmann conveyors was the first order of business.”

We know it’s unsatisfying to read when we can’t put an actual name to the story but nearly all of our customers are either bound by non-disclosures and are not allowed to provide their names or their companies consider our conveying systems a competitive advantage to be kept quiet and under wraps. Magazine editors are always asking us about writing stories showing how a customer uses our conveyors. Our sales people are always trying to get videos of our conveyors installed in live action. The answer is almost always, “No, our Volkmann is our secret,” or something similar.

Last year, when a global pharmaceutical company acquired a growing nutritional supplements company, a process engineer for the big pharma company touring his newly acquired facility was impressed by our pneumatic vacuum conveyors. Our systems were being used to transfer powdered ingredients from bulk bags and sacks to mixers, and again downstream to capture finished tablets at the tablet press, transferring them automatically to the filling line. “I was struck by the cleanliness of the process,” said the process engineer, who couldn’t divulge a name. “That’s why I started adding Volkmann conveyors to every one of my pharmaceutical production lines. The results have been as phenomenal as anticipated.”

Then there’s the chemical engineer who started working with a major chemical manufacturer as an intern while in college. The company was transferring ignitable powders in our pneumatic vacuum conveyor systems from drums and barrels directly into a vessel. “That’s how I learned about the ATEX certification, combustible dust explosions, and how to avoid them,” says the chemical engineer. Nearly 20 years later, the same conveying system continues to operate day and night and the intern is now the plant manager who has specified additional Volkmann vacuum conveyors for a number of material transfer applications. “Volkmann conveyors are explosion-proof by design so I don’t have to worry about keeping my staff safe,” he added. “But it’s all our secret, ok?”

Learn more about conveying your materials here.