The installation is part of a major upgrade of the packaging facilities at the plant in Surabaya, for handling of cigarette cartons. The system increases efficiency in material handling and reduces wastage of precious manpower. It also enhances flexibility and enables greater capacity utilization.

Flexible combination of packers
The purpose of the system was to transport the cigarette cartons from the 16 Schmermund packers at high level to four discharge points at the bailer. The main consideration for the customer was that the design needs to have enough flexibility to accommodate any combination of four packers to be linked to the relevant bailer. 

In product packaging there is zero tolerance for scratching. To minimize damage, the cartons run on FlexLink's flocked anti-marking chain, well suited for lightweight products with scratch sensitive surfaces. 

There are a total of 16 incline conveyors and two mainline conveyors of high level. The mainline conveyor has a speed of 60 meters per minute. Each mainline conveyor has a capacity to handle 120 cartons per minute.

FlexLink carton handling system
The customer was offered a complete solution including:

• Schmermund feed to mainline conveyors
• Schmermund gravity reject conveyors
• Counting with digital display at Schmemunds
• Mainline feed conveyor 
• High-speed pushers to bailers
• Gravity reject conveyors prior to high-speed pusher
• Soft pack control system
• Merge controllers and diverters (semi automatic)    

Cartons are discharged from each of the Schmermund wrappers at a maximum rate of 40 cartons per minute, inclined and merged into one of the two mainlines for feeding to the relevant case packer.

Products on each of the Schmermund spurs flows over the top of the main line and is declined before merging. The spur is fitted with a manual diverter and push gravity reject conveyor for rejecting products. Each of the mainlines is designed to accommodate the throughput of 2 bailers maximum. The routing of wrappers is manually pre-set by the operators at each of the merge points, and mechanically controlled.

Cartons flows along the mainlines before being declined prior to the relevant case packer, then pushed off at 90 degree onto the existing case packer feed conveyor, at a maximum rate of 160 carton per minute.

Mechanical merge control 
The device is designed to allow flow of product from one line only. An arm over each of the tracks, will either hinge up to allow product to pass through, or be locked off if the first track has product present. As the area is cleared the arm will hinge back down and release any product held on the second track. Each unit is mounted on a pneumatically switched slide, which allows the unit to move, to accommodate both mainline feed conveyors. Limit switches allows the controls system to track which bailer is being fed.