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  • #16
    Thanks Timm

    Sounds like I have some work to do on this machine. Here I was hoping that since it was brand spankin new I would have a easy go of it for a while. Guess the Italians put a stop to that!
    It would be great to get your list of parts you have ordered. THanks!
    So I guess you are smart and dont pay attention to the manual about lubricating every 100 or 40 hours like it recommends. I bet I should start tomorrow! Already ran the machine ~ 65 -75 hours and have not lubed everything, only the parts easy to get to. I thought i was getting ahead of the manual too...
    Today was fun. I had no less than 5 exploding bottles in the filler and aside from blaming bad bottles I couldnt find any obvious problem with it. Have you had these problems?
    About the capper assembly, I have been taking the lower part off after every run and soaking it and letting it dry, but the other part with the springs I will have to look into. I cant think of what you mean. Tomorrow I will look.

    Thanks again, Tim. I hope I can be of some use at some point to return the favor the more I get to know this machine.

    Comment


    • #17
      Brian--

      Bottles breaking in the filler, IME, are due to the filler height being too low. You should be able to see a couple of mm between the top of the bottle and the bottom of the bottle seal rim when the bottles are entering the filler. If you set the filler too high, the bottles will simply not fill. Check your Pedestal Pressure--we run about 4-4.5 bar. Too high a pressure here can break bottles. Once again, too low a pressure will just cause no-fills.

      The "lower assy." of the crowner is part G on pg. 76. It's the bronze cylinder that holds the cap closing cone (I) and cap press (D). It is retained by a single Allen-head screw on the left hand side of the lower half of the SS main cylinder of the crowner. It's critically important that this lower unit be free to move within the main housing--that retaining screw should never be tight. Since a lot of beer foam gets into this area when crowning, it needs to be cleaned regularly. Ours got frozen into the main housing, and started busting about every other bottle. Getting it broken loose so I could pull it out took hours, and the entire lower unit was ruined. I'm sure you can guess that that was not cheap to replace!

      I've got to get back to monitoring our 17th century World Tandem labeler--
      Timm Turrentine

      Brewerywright,
      Terminal Gravity Brewing,
      Enterprise. Oregon.

      Comment


      • #18
        Back again. It looks like the labeler might just make it through another run!

        Brian--Don't worry--it only took us about six years to finally get the GAI dialed in to where it (usually) runs perfectly!

        I tend to over-lubricate. Sorry experience has shown me this beats heck out of under-lubing. The areas I lube before every run are:

        Bearing shafts for the crowner--those big rods it runs up and down on. Use food-grade grease, just enough to push some of the old grease out.

        Drive bearing, crowner--FG grease again.

        Shafts for the filler head bottle seal assy.--This is the part that holds the bottles. Use your mineral oil spray with the assy. at the top of its travel.

        Filler head pedestals--Mineral oil. Access these through the door on the back of the filler base. With the air pressure shut off, and the ped.s at the bottom of their travel, hit every shaft in there.

        Otherwise, I pretty much try to stick with the lube sched. from the manual. Our machine doesn't seem to have a run-time meter, so this is a bit of a guessing game.

        Here's my inventory for maint. and repair parts for the filler heads only:

        All part #s are from diag. 3012-42001.

        Seals--these must come from Prospero, as they're proprietary:

        Bottle seal, #42220--24 ea.

        Closing seal, #42410--24 ea.

        Tank seal, #424400--12 ea, these are only replace at regular rebuild times.

        Flash cuff, #42310--24 ea.

        O-rings. These are common metric o-rings. Source them from your friendly local supplier (much cheaper). Just send 'em a sample of each:

        OR 103, 3/head--64 ea.

        OR 112, 2/head--48 ea.

        OR 114, 6/head--144 ea.

        OR 3024, 4/head--96 ea.

        ORS 3112, 1/head: 12 ea. I only replace these at rebuild.

        Springs, from Prospero. I generally replace these at rebuild, but it's nice to have some spare in case of loss:

        Upper & middle valve springs, 2/head, #42310--24 ea.

        Lower valve springs, 1/head, #42190--12 ea.

        Bottle seal assy. springs, 2/head, #42211--48 ea.

        Other, from Pros:

        Snifter orifice, 1/head, #42280--24 ea.--easily lost and can't run without 'em. Also replace at rebuild.

        I think that's about it. You can see from the numbers I keep on hand which get lost, worn, or FUBARed the most frequently.

        BTW: If you're breaking glass in the filler, you've almost certainly ruined a few bottle seals. The symptoms are low-or-no-fills, with little or no foaming. These can't have a nick, scratch, or ding in them, but should show a nice, even ring where the neck of the bottle seats. Tear 'em out with a small screwdriver or two--they come out in pieces. I use a drill press (not running) with a short off-cut of 1 1/4" pipe for a base, and an 11/16" socket wrench for a punch to install them. Use lots of CIP lube or dish soap to lube 'em up, and good luck!

        Later--
        Timm Turrentine

        Brewerywright,
        Terminal Gravity Brewing,
        Enterprise. Oregon.

        Comment


        • #19
          I'd also recommend putting a lot of grease on the chain under the filler that controls the bowl moving up and down. Ours wasn't properly greased about a year ago and ending up becoming stiff and breaking. Needless to say it was not fun to replace it in that small space.
          Nate Jackson
          Packaging Manager
          Marble Brewery
          Albuquerque, NM

          Comment


          • #20
            Oh boy. Been there, mostly solved that!

            The crowner is a PITA, but it can be made to work pretty danged well. We usually run at about 3,000 bottles/hour, which is wide open on our 3003 Bier, but it took years of tweaking (and cost me years of lifetime due to stress) to get it going well.

            The crown channel on the vibratory feeder needs lots of attention. If crowns are getting jammed up at the input side of the "selector gate" (my term)--the covered portion of the ramp where the up-side-down crowns get dropped--you may need to adjust the upper cover height. The crew is cleaning the GAI right now, so I can't check, but IIRC, there should be about 0.010" clearance from the top of a crown to the bottom of that top cover--use a feeler gauge. The output side should be the same. Getting the little gate that sorts the crowns right is mostly a matter of tinkering, and tiny changes make for big results. Push some crowns through by hand, and set that gate just a little looser than allows inverted crown to fall out, run the vibrator, then tweak it again. Have a low-fill on hand!

            Forget the "crown dust" theory. It has neothing to do with anything. Sure, if you have drifts of it building up it'll cause problems, but....

            I spent way too much time solving the pancaked crown problem. Here's a picture of the crowner assy. for reference:



            On the lower left of the crowner is the doohickey that retracts the crowns behind the one being applied to the bottle. This is where your problem likely lies.

            First, get the finger that pulls the crowns back adjusted right. It should be just a little higher than is required to move the crowns back. If it's pinching crowns between it and the upper part of the feed channel, bad things happen.

            Next, the fixed finger that hangs from the non-moving frame of the crowner is critical. This took me forever to figure out. If your crowner is spitting crowns out of the top of the lower crown channel, you have this set too high. The finger (spring-loaded) should be level to start with, then pay attention to the height. Just barely high enough to retract the next crown so it doesn't get the leading edge crimped with the crown being applied is all the higher it need to be. On our machine, the crown at the top of the lower feed channel was getting bent because it was being pulled too far back in the channel, hitting the upper, fixed, portion of the channel, and would then jam up the works.

            I'm glad to see that you did get that sensor for un-crowned bottles installed. I saw mention of it in the manual, and inquired to Pros. about it, but to no avail. Why am I not surprised that it cost $2,000? With our machine working 99% of the time, we still tend to send a bunch of un-crowned bottles down the line before someone stops the machine to clear the crown channel.

            I hope this is of some help--
            Timm Turrentine

            Brewerywright,
            Terminal Gravity Brewing,
            Enterprise. Oregon.

            Comment


            • #21
              Picture of the lower crowner

              Tim,
              You must be a genious or very very very patient (or both) to have figured this out. I am ready to throw the whole thing in the kettle after just one night of trying to solve the issues it provides for me day in and day out. I think I have to look into the lower flipper finger thingy that holds the crown back. I think I will need to be extremely patient, but it sounds like that could be my answer.

              Yesterday I tried to call Pros. and sent some pics and explained the best I could (and I even like the Prospero guy I have been dealing with) but they are pretty much useless. Unless you pay them to come out they cant figure out anything on the phone. Luckily for me our guy is coming out to install another machine (yes, we bought another machine. But we bought it before we knew what a piece of crap GAI and Prospero is)

              In that picture you have, is the allen wrench sticking out at the place you refered to before where you can take out the spring housing to soak?



              Originally posted by TGTimm View Post
              Oh boy. Been there, mostly solved that!

              The crowner is a PITA, but it can be made to work pretty danged well. We usually run at about 3,000 bottles/hour, which is wide open on our 3003 Bier, but it took years of tweaking (and cost me years of lifetime due to stress) to get it going well.

              The crown channel on the vibratory feeder needs lots of attention. If crowns are getting jammed up at the input side of the "selector gate" (my term)--the covered portion of the ramp where the up-side-down crowns get dropped--you may need to adjust the upper cover height. The crew is cleaning the GAI right now, so I can't check, but IIRC, there should be about 0.010" clearance from the top of a crown to the bottom of that top cover--use a feeler gauge. The output side should be the same. Getting the little gate that sorts the crowns right is mostly a matter of tinkering, and tiny changes make for big results. Push some crowns through by hand, and set that gate just a little looser than allows inverted crown to fall out, run the vibrator, then tweak it again. Have a low-fill on hand!

              Forget the "crown dust" theory. It has neothing to do with anything. Sure, if you have drifts of it building up it'll cause problems, but....

              I spent way too much time solving the pancaked crown problem. Here's a picture of the crowner assy. for reference:



              On the lower left of the crowner is the doohickey that retracts the crowns behind the one being applied to the bottle. This is where your problem likely lies.

              First, get the finger that pulls the crowns back adjusted right. It should be just a little higher than is required to move the crowns back. If it's pinching crowns between it and the upper part of the feed channel, bad things happen.

              Next, the fixed finger that hangs from the non-moving frame of the crowner is critical. This took me forever to figure out. If your crowner is spitting crowns out of the top of the lower crown channel, you have this set too high. The finger (spring-loaded) should be level to start with, then pay attention to the height. Just barely high enough to retract the next crown so it doesn't get the leading edge crimped with the crown being applied is all the higher it need to be. On our machine, the crown at the top of the lower feed channel was getting bent because it was being pulled too far back in the channel, hitting the upper, fixed, portion of the channel, and would then jam up the works.

              I'm glad to see that you did get that sensor for un-crowned bottles installed. I saw mention of it in the manual, and inquired to Pros. about it, but to no avail. Why am I not surprised that it cost $2,000? With our machine working 99% of the time, we still tend to send a bunch of un-crowned bottles down the line before someone stops the machine to clear the crown channel.

              I hope this is of some help--

              Comment


              • #22
                Yeah, Brian--sorry I forgot to mention that! The 5mm Allen wrench is sticking out of the screw (6mmX1tpmmX13mm) that retains the lower portion of the crowner, which houses the cap closing cone, the cap pusher and the spring for the cap pusher. If any of the moving parts in this assy. are not moving freely, bad, bad things happen--usually involving exploding bottles. Also be sure that retaining screw is not tight--the entire assy. must float freely, so the compensation spring in the upper assy. can do its job, that is, compensating for varying tolerances in the height of the bottles. If the lower assy. can't float within the upper, once again, bottles explode.

                It's frustrating that there is absolutely no mention of any of this this in the GAI manual. When I first tore down the capper, that lower assy. was frozen in place--it took a lot of heat and forcing to get it out, and then I had to replace the entire lower assy. Not cheap.

                And, yep, this took me several years of extreme frustration and trial-and error to figure out. I had some help from Richard at Prospero NY, but as you said, they get paid to come out and fix things, not for giving advice on the phone.

                I recently did a full tear-down of the capper assy, which I documented. I need to get those photos up with an explanation of the process.
                Timm Turrentine

                Brewerywright,
                Terminal Gravity Brewing,
                Enterprise. Oregon.

                Comment


                • #23
                  Prospero vs GAI

                  I just want to update this thread with the following information since Admin asked me to:

                  1)Prospero has been good and is working on fixing the problems our GAI is having. They actually are working very hard for us and I appreciate them for that.

                  2) I still think the GAI machine is a pile of junk that has caused us a week of production (maybe we just have a lemon, but whatever it is I am unimpressed when a brand new and very expensive machine is breaking down left and right)

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    We don't have a GAI filler, but the crowner unit on our Comac 12/12/1 filler is an Arol unit. We have had similar issues over the past few years with our Arol unit with springs breaking, etc. I'm curious - what is the model number for the Arol capper on the GAI fillers? It sounds like a different model, since we don't have any vibration generators on our crown hopper.
                    Linus Hall
                    Yazoo Brewing
                    Nashville, TN
                    www.yazoobrew.com

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Quarterly Maintenance

                      Wow, I am extremely happy i stumbled upon this thread. I have been using this machine for about a year and a half and we have had some similar issues. We are on day one of a 3 day quarterly maintenance and I would love to see if any of you have a checklist or tips to what you do for quarterly or regular maintenance. We like to do preventative maintenance and it's hard to come up with a plan from the manuals we were given...

                      Any help would be greatly appreciative and I'll buy you a beer if you're ever in San Diego.

                      Kyle Ward
                      AleSmith Brewing Company
                      kyle@alesmith.com

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Howdy--I'm back.

                        First thing I'd like to say is that the GAI is by far the best of the three bottlers we've owned for our output. These things are delicate and complex, and can't be expected to keep working without some careful and frequent maintenance. Prospero has been very helpful in my experience, especially considering we've had nothing but phone consults over the five+ years we've been running this machine.

                        That changed recently, as I finally got the bosses to lay out the funds to have a tech from Prospero's western division come out and help me figure out what's what and what's worn out and needs replacing. Thanks, Victor!

                        First thing was our vibrator frequency drive board, which had been a PITA as it wasn't stable and required constant tweaking to keep the crowns feeding. We replaced the old unit (Techno Vibrazioni FQ2) with a much better unit (no identifying marks). The new unit has a potentiometer mounted on the front panel to adjust the amplitude, so any tweaking it requires is very easy to do, and it very rarely needs any. The frequency is set on the board to 50Hz (and this board has a display for the freq!). The new unit is also more powerful, with an output of 5 amps, as opposed the 3 of the old unit. $2K, but worth it IMHO.

                        We found out some of our settings were wrong. The filler height should be set at 8mm above the rim of the bottles, not the couple of mm we've been using. The pedestal pressure should be about 1 to 1.5 bar above the pressure in the bowl, maximum 4 bar--using too high a pressure has caused premature wear on the filler drive gears, which need replacement. The crowner should be set to 60 mm (double check this, I don't have my notes handy) above the top of the bottle, but our drive cam is just about shot, so we can't get this right until we replace it.

                        We found out we'd been cleaning the machine improperly and not thoroughly enough. Mostly, we were not getting the vacuum and CO2 lines cleaned. I'll try to post the new cleaning instructions when I can find them, but you all with newer machines probably don't have this problem. We don't have a "cleaning cam", so we're not getting as thorough a cleaning of some circuits as we should be. More on that later.

                        We've got quite a few expensive parts to replace, not surprising since we've been running 3000 btls/hr two to four days a week for over five years, not always with proper preventive maintenance.

                        Anyway, thanks again to Victor and AWS Prospero for helping me and my co-worker to get some more of this puzzle solved--

                        Timm
                        Terminal Gravity Brewing,
                        Enterprise, OR.
                        Timm Turrentine

                        Brewerywright,
                        Terminal Gravity Brewing,
                        Enterprise. Oregon.

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Quartely Maintenance

                          Well, Kyle, the problem is that the maint. schedule is based on run-time, and I have no idea how your usage compares to ours, but I'll give it a go:

                          1) Grease everything as per the manual! Take note of some of the items mentioned above, like the chain that drives the filler lift mech.

                          2) Check everything for leaks. With the machine at full CO2 and air pressure use soapy water and look for "beards" of bubbles. Replace any gaskets or O-rings that are leaking. Be especially sure to check the slip-ring gaskets atop the bowl, where the CO2 and vacuum lines attach. If the CO2 slip-rings are leaking, replace all of the slip-rings.

                          3) Replace all rubber in the filler heads. This is a bundle of fun for the whole family! While you have the heads apart, carefully clean everything. Be sure to replace the bottle seals at this time.

                          4) Check every moving part for wear. Pretty much, no moving parts should have any slop. If any part needs to be replaced that has multiples (most do) and one or more show wear, replace them all (hey, they all have the same amount of use).

                          I'm sure I'll think of something else, but it's time to go stare at the GAI for a while since we're bottling today--
                          Timm Turrentine

                          Brewerywright,
                          Terminal Gravity Brewing,
                          Enterprise. Oregon.

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Rinsing and cleaning protocols

                            These files are from notes taken by our head brewer, Frank, during Victor's visit. They are still works-in-progress, and any mistakes, exclusions, or discrepancies are mine or Frank's.

                            Cleaning the bottler.docRinsing the Bottler After Bottling Newest.doc

                            We use a mild caustic (NaOH) solution for cleaning. You may use something else. Peracetic acid has been recommended to us by Prospero. If you use steam sterilization, you'll probably want to ignore our cleaning procedure and follow whatever instructions you have from Prospero.

                            Good luck--
                            Timm Turrentine

                            Brewerywright,
                            Terminal Gravity Brewing,
                            Enterprise. Oregon.

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Help--Cleaning Cam

                              Now it's my turn to ask for some help. We don't have the plastic cam for cleaning the filler monobloc. Prospero wants too much for a piece of UHMW plastic and some spacers and bolts, so I'd like to make my own. I have plenty of UHMW plastic, and I'm used to working with it.

                              If one of you could get a couple of good pictures of the assembly, and, preferably, throw the cam itself on a flat-bed scanner and get a decent, low-res (~72 ppi) scan of the cam to send me, I'd greatly appreciate it--
                              Timm Turrentine

                              Brewerywright,
                              Terminal Gravity Brewing,
                              Enterprise. Oregon.

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Wash Cam scans

                                Hey Timm,

                                Thanks so much for your reply, I will post more thoroughly as soon as I get a chance, here is the top and bottom scans of our wash cam. Click image for larger version

Name:	Wash Cam Bottom.jpg
Views:	1
Size:	62.0 KB
ID:	190196Click image for larger version

Name:	Wash Cam Top.jpg
Views:	1
Size:	50.7 KB
ID:	190197

                                Hope this helps, and feel free to email me if you need any further scans.

                                Cheers,

                                Kyle
                                kyle@alesmith.com

                                Comment

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