Drive technology for customised finish under servo control

June 2, 2021 6:06 pm

Drive technology from Beckhoff plays an important role at the traditional Austrian company.

The customisation options offered by the Styrian manufacturer for wine, sparkling wine, spirits, and fruit juice bottles, range from “simple” top and side printing through to sophisticated foil embossing and other typical design features for caps such as breathing or cork ventilation holes, spherical or grid graining, tear-off perforations, or tear-off strips. “Many customers come to us with a template and ask whether we can reproduce the particular design. The fact that we have our own engineering department is tremendously beneficial, since it allows us to cater to individual customer requirements in terms of shape, colour, logo, font, etc. If we do not have the right tools for a pending order, we carry out a feasibility check and, if necessary, upgrade or convert the existing equipment accordingly,” says Christian Stanzel, highlighting the company’s comprehensive manufacturing expertise.

Originally founded in 1892 as a forge, the traditional company based in Pinggau has developed into a premium supplier of bottle caps and twist caps.

A further special characteristic of BT-Watzke is that it acts as a one-stop supplier – from low-cost heat shrink capsules to high-quality tin capsules. Other options in between offered by the Styrian manufacturer include capsules made from polylaminate film or aluminium. “Apart from we, there is no other producer in the world that can manufacture the complete range of closing products at one location. With our Vinotwist twist caps, which we have been producing since 2007, and an ever-growing assortment of caps, we have developed a range of solutions for closing the most varied types of bottles,” says electrical engineer Daniel Wolf, pointing out the many “facilitator” qualities that characterise the Pinggau-based traditional business. And he must know at the end of the day, it is usually up to him and his colleague Gerhard Schuller to fulfil the required underlying technical conditions for outputting around 350 million caps per year in cooperation with Workshop Manager Franz Reifbäck and his team.

BT-Watzke only very rarely purchases ready-made standard machines. “We build almost everything ourselves – and in the way we need it,” confirms Franz Reifbäck. Ultimately, it is important for us to be able to respond flexibly to different customer requirements. Some 100 self-built systems in total are currently in use in the capsule factory in Pinggau – including 14 that “simply” paint. One of these machines was recently extended by an additional part. “Because the lateral surface areas of our twist caps require up to three coats depending on the colour, we decided to integrate a third machine into this production process in order to increase throughput rates,” says Franz Reifbäck, explaining why they decided to give this “running system” a helping hand.

For BT-Watzke, it was primarily the interaction between the “small and large drive technology” in synchronisation with production cycles, which at first glance for Franz Reifbäck and Daniel Wolf did not seem so easy to control. But thanks to the cam disc functionality recommended by Bernhard Fischer, even this overly complex task could be solved easily with one software switch for everything. All actual and target positions are transmitted via EtherCAT to the EL72xx servo motor terminals and AX5000 servo amplifiers involved, thus allowing an electronic cam disc to be implemented on the AM8000 servo motors. “We watched closely how several motion sequences are synchronised in TwinCAT 3. Next time we will be able to do it alone,” says Daniel Wolf and Gerhard Schuller, pleased with how much they learned during the intensive collaboration with Beckhoff.

For more info, visit: https://www.beckhoff.com/