Design and In-House Development of Automatic Tube-Filling Machine
摘要
Filling is a crucial process for industries that supply fluid products such as food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and beverages. While automated filling machines offer advantages in terms of efficiency and precision, the high cost of complex controllers, sensors, and actuation devices makes it challenging for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to afford them. As a result, many MSMEs still use manual filling processes. To address this issue, a low-cost, reliable, and easily accessible automated filling setup is needed. In this article, details of design and in-house development of an automatic tube-filling machine is presented. Proposed low-cost automatic tube-filling machine has five stations, each one for a specific task. The setup can carry up to five tubes at a time, and it automates the filling, sealing, and ejection process. The proposed filling setup tries to eliminate the need for human intervention in the filling process, improving efficiency and reducing errors. While human intervention is required to insert the tubes into the tube holder at station 1, the presence of the tube is verified, while station 2 is responsible for filling the tube with a specific fluid. Station 3 checks whether the tube has been filled or not, while station 4 is responsible for sealing the tube. Finally, station 5 ejects the filled tubes using a push-out mechanism. The details of the setup provided in this paper are useful for building a reliable and affordable option for MSMEs to automate the filling process, for improving productivity and competitiveness.