Questions for the CIMEC experts here?

[Ithacan]

I'm a recent addition to an upstate NY brewery which has a CIMEC 16/1 filler. There have been trials and tribulations learning and taming the line. Got a couple questions for you all-

How reliable is the AROL crowner? Mine has moments where it can be fine for more than 1000 crowns in a row, then will totally buck that trend and maybe throw a bad crown every two cases. It appears that our 'female' crown sorting ring (the stationary one) is rather worn out.

Also, I have been having issues with short fills, or over fobbing ('half' fills are mostly gone, all of the bottles will fill, but some consistent filler heads will fob over). The 'buttons' on the line seem to be under control. My inclination is that the two rubber washers in the 'hat' of the filler valve which live in the bowl (cimv-04 and cimv-06- the ones that are about the size of a nickel and the size of your pinkie fingernail) from prospero are to blame for this.

I have a million questions about this line, as our projected growth dictates that I have this under control by the time production ramps up in a couple of months.

Hopefully some of my parts descriptions made sense.

T.I.A.

edit: clarity.

[fcaseyf]

Arol cappers are pretty reliable, the closing cup is probably worn out and needs to be replaced, have you checked the caps with a crimp gauge? For fill problems also check for clogs in the vent screw (the set screw that is on the left inside the middle snifter) sometimes that gets clogged and can wreak havoc on fill heights (I used to have a little piece of wire to poke thru them to clean them.

Good luck

Casey

[Ithacan]

Arol cappers are pretty reliable, the closing cup is probably worn out and needs to be replaced, have you checked the caps with a crimp gauge? For fill problems also check for clogs in the vent screw (the set screw that is on the left inside the middle snifter) sometimes that gets clogged and can wreak havoc on fill heights (I used to have a little piece of wire to poke thru them to clean them.

Good luck

Casey

Thanks! the closing cup (in house, known and the 'donut') is a little worn, but the caps are to spec on the crimp gauge. What i'm having more trouble with is the sorting of the crowns- some of them come down either bent or upside down from the wheel and won't load into the crowner properly, stopping the line until i remove the crown and get things going again.

My inclination is that the sorting wheel is both worn and isn't adjusted properly. There is a sensor (which senses crowns in the track) to stop the wheel which has a timer setting located in the main control panel that I have played with. Thing is that sometimes it fails to start the sorting wheel back up when there isn't a crown there for it to sense. Probably worth mentioning that we have silkscreened crowns with our logo on them, and that some of crowns make it to the bottle pretty scuffed up, I would imagine leaving the paint behind in the hopper, wheel and track gumming things up.


here are some pictures showing the wear of the stationary sorting wheel-






Not really sure about this set screw, I don't see anything resembling that on our line. I believe our line is from 1995.



regarding the overfobbing, I have the smaller two of those rubber washers coming from prospero today, and will have them installed for tomorrow's run. I have relatively high hopes that this will resolve the improper fill issue as it was pretty reliable two bottling runs ago on monday.

EDIT: are there no inline pictures on this forum? or is there a setting I need to change?

[Rob Creighton]

From your pics, the two wires designed to reject inverted caps seem to be in one piece. Are they knicked or bent in any way? The important view is the two faces when you take the wheel off (which I hope you do daily). Are there any serious dents in the brass on the hopper or the wheel? Do you remove all caps and wipe or spray out the cap dust daily (it can carry bacteria)? You should. Look for bent caps rolling around in the hopper. If there, then the caps are being damaged and rejected back into the hopper which narrows it down. If you have caps that have a lot of ink removed then they are getting hung up and worn down in the damaged position.

In my experience, the snift button activates the depressurization sequence that is the #1 source of foaming and fill height variability on most fillers. It is often a set screw option of orifice size that allows you to determine the rate that your bottle will decompress when activated. Sometimes, on slower fillers, it is a preset orifice size drilled into the head. I have often used a dairy fogging gun that has a venturi feed on it to suck in sanitizer solution into a compressed air feed that we used hourly to spray down the face of our filler and crowner. If you are getting variable fill height or foaming, when you remove that screw plate on the fill head and pull out the snift button, slide out the button from the holder and look for obvious debris (spray clean). Spray into the open hole on the fill head to blow out any debris in the snift orifice (the most likely spot for a clog) and then reassemble. Restart. Hope it helps.

[Ithacan]

From your pics, the two wires designed to reject inverted caps seem to be in one piece. Are they knicked or bent in any way? The important view is the two faces when you take the wheel off (which I hope you do daily). Are there any serious dents in the brass on the hopper or the wheel? Do you remove all caps and wipe or spray out the cap dust daily (it can carry bacteria)? You should. Look for bent caps rolling around in the hopper. If there, then the caps are being damaged and rejected back into the hopper which narrows it down. If you have caps that have a lot of ink removed then they are getting hung up and worn down in the damaged position.

In my experience, the snift button activates the depressurization sequence that is the #1 source of foaming and fill height variability on most fillers. It is often a set screw option of orifice size that allows you to determine the rate that your bottle will decompress when activated. Sometimes, on slower fillers, it is a preset orifice size drilled into the head. I have often used a dairy fogging gun that has a venturi feed on it to suck in sanitizer solution into a compressed air feed that we used hourly to spray down the face of our filler and crowner. If you are getting variable fill height or foaming, when you remove that screw plate on the fill head and pull out the snift button, slide out the button from the holder and look for obvious debris (spray clean). Spray into the open hole on the fill head to blow out any debris in the snift orifice (the most likely spot for a clog) and then reassemble. Restart. Hope it helps.

Absolutely that helps. Things are getting much better- while I haven't started taking the wheel off daily, I have started emptying the hopper until there are no crowns in there. During last thursdays run, the machine crowned 130 straight cases before a misshapen crown stopped the line- this is a HUGE improvement from where we had been.

As far as the filling goes- that's going a lot better, there was a part (the snifter backing ring, the white nylon washer) which was worn out and flattened which was holding the snifters open longer than they should have been which was causing all kinds of havoc, 48 of them later, things are much better, we still have short fills, but significantly less than before.

One of the biggest hurdles getting this thing running has been determining which parts are third party and which of the third party parts are working and which aren't. If anyone has found third party parts for the filler rings and washers which work in their CIMEC, I would love to hear about it, as some of them are way expensive [for what they are] from the direct part supplier.

Thanks to everyone, and to anyone like me who is new and sees this thread a couple of years down the line: don't be shy about bumping this, these machines are only getting older and more worn, so don't be afraid to ask, I get emailed when this thread gets a reply.

[Mavit]

Cimec 16/1

Hi,

I have a 16/1 CIMEC filler to start up also, and I have no manual.
Did you ever find one? If so I'd be willing to pay for a copy.

Thanks,

Mavit

[dereknobleluke]

I have a cimec 12/1. Italy and prospero have totally pissed me off this week. Did anyone on this thread obtain a manual?

[raymondjwagner]

I have a cimec 12/1. Italy and prospero have totally pissed me off this week. Did anyone on this thread obtain a manual?

Ditto. I have a 1996 DPLS 16/1 and cannot get a manual from them. Does anyone have any manual, any model/year so I can get an idea of how these guys think?