EL2-B — in-line automatic drum filling machine
A sequential machine. Drums advance from station to station, and on each cycle all of them move one position — so while one drum is being filled, another is being uncapped and a third is being capped. Every operation happens at the same time, on a different drum.
That is how you get to 130 drums an hour. The operator feeds the line at the infeed and collects full drums at the outfeed, and never handles a container during the process.
Advanced series · Automatic · Drums 60–250 L
Is this the machine you need?
Yes, if you fill steel or plastic drums continuously, at volumes where a pallet-based machine cannot keep up, and you need uncapping, purging, capping or sealing in the same pass.
No, if your drums arrive on pallets and you would rather not depalletize — the SP3 and the Robot Filler work on the pallet. And no, if you fill containers under thirty litres: that is the EL2-E.
Every AiCROV machine handles virtually any industrial liquid — viscous, sticky, foaming, flammable, corrosive. What changes with the product is the nozzle, the materials in contact with it and how the dose is controlled. Not the model.
What decides the model is the container format, the throughput you need, and how much of the handling you want the machine to do. That is why our range is not organized by industry. A detergent plant and a lubricants plant filling the same drum at the same rate buy the same machine.
How it works
1. Filling recipe, net weight and container format are selected on the operator panel.
2. The equipment is set to the format: positioning guides, nozzle, and cap feeding where the configuration includes it.
3. Empty drums enter the line on the accumulation roller conveyor.
4. The machine takes them one by one through the fitted stations — centring, uncapping, purging, filling, capping, sealing.
5. Filling is automatic, on the station’s own scale, to the configured net weight.
6. Full drums leave the line on the outfeed conveyor.
Automatic Drum Filling Line EL2-B-4 + Palletizer | Chemical & Petrochemical | AiCROV
A complete EL2-B line with an automatic drum palletizer. 200-litre metal drums are centred and uncapped, filled in two stages, recapped with their own cap, sealed and palletized, with no operator handling the product.
More videos of this machine
Other installations and configurations, filmed in our workshop and at customer sites.
Automatic Drum Filling Machine EL2-B-4 in Production — Motor Oil, Indian Oil (IOCL) | AiCROV
Complete Drum Filling, Palletizing & Wrapping Line EL2-B-6 | Lube Oil | AiCROV
Operating stations
The machine is configured by fitting stations in the available positions, and each position accepts a specific type of operation.
Drum centring. Two arms — one with free rollers, the other with motorised wheels — hold the drum by its lower part and rotate it about its vertical axis. A sensor detects the bunghole passing and stops the rotation, leaving the drum in a known position. This is what lets the machine work with drums whose bunghole is off-centre and which arrive in any orientation — which is to say, with real drums.
Centring and uncapping. In addition to centring, a head unscrews the cap once the bunghole has been located and places it on the cap conveyor, which carries it to the capping station to be refitted on the same drum.
Filling. Each filling position is a complete dosing group, with its accessories, its own nozzle and its own scale, sized for a full drum.
Purging. A lance is inserted into the container to deliver inert gas before filling.
Capping and sealing. Automatic screwing with adjustable tightening torque, with the option of sealing in the same station. The head is floating, and compensates for misalignment and height differences between drums.
Filling modes: two assemblies
Two filling assemblies are available, and the choice is made when the machine is ordered: the assembly is a physical part of the machine, not a setting. Both are made of sandblasted AISI 304 stainless steel; the nozzle is AISI 316L as standard, with other materials available for demanding products.
Under bunghole filling
Normally used for products that do not foam and are neither flammable nor explosive, including dense and viscous products. The nozzle descends until it is just inside the container and fills from that position. This assembly fills under the bunghole only.
Immersion filling
Normally used for foaming products, and for flammable or explosive products. The nozzle descends to the bottom of the container, and the filling recipe chooses one of three ways of filling:
- Rising with the product: the nozzle opens at the bottom and rises as the container fills. The control calculates the product height inside the container and keeps the nozzle at that level, stopping at the top of the container, without leaving it, until the fill is complete.
- From the bottom: the nozzle stays at its lowest position for the whole fill. For extremely foaming products.
- Under bunghole: the nozzle enters just past the bunghole and fills from there, as the under-bunghole assembly does.
If your range includes foaming or flammable products, or may include them later, choose the immersion assembly: it covers every way of filling.
Machine architecture
The structure carries the operating positions in line and the transfer system that moves drums from one station to the next. Each filling station has its own scale — load cell, summing box, support mechanics and weighing channel in the control system — so weight governs the cycle directly.
The machine works integrated into a roller conveyor line with accumulation at the infeed, selected and quoted separately.
Inert gas filling (optional)
Any AiCROV machine can be supplied to fill under an inert atmosphere. It is fitted as an accessory, and it touches the nozzle, the control cabinet and the recipe.
How it is built. The nozzle carries a small passage through which the gas flows. A dedicated solenoid valve in the main control cabinet drives that flow, so the gas is part of the filling cycle rather than something an operator does alongside it.
When the gas flows is a recipe parameter, not a fixed setting. You choose to inert before the nozzle opens, during filling, after the target weight is reached, or any combination of the three — and you set how many seconds each phase lasts. Different products need different answers, and the machine stores one per product.
Why a small amount of gas is enough. Nitrogen is heavier than air. A short burst into the bottom of an empty container leaves a layer of nitrogen sitting there, and filling then begins inside that atmosphere rather than in air. As the product level rises, the nitrogen is pushed up ahead of it and stays between the liquid and the container opening. A little more at the end, before the container is capped, and the product has never touched air.
It is not always nitrogen. The gas is chosen for the product; nitrogen is simply the most common.
Inerting by overpressure is the other route: capping assemblies that pressurize the inside of the container to a few millibars immediately before the cap goes on.
And the case that is not about product quality at all. Filling a flammable product into a metal container can generate a spark as the liquid starts to flow. Displace the oxygen first and there is nothing to ignite. On some installations that is the whole reason the inerting is there.
The nozzle is interchangeable. It can be replaced by a different model or diameter without modifying the station, which means the machine can be adapted to a different product or a different container years after it was bought. How nozzles are cleaned →
AiCROVFill®
A software ecosystem, not a single function. AiCROVFill® is the whole of AiCROV’s filling software, built around one aim: to fill as accurately and as fast as the product allows — efficient in time, effective in the result — and always safely.
Final weight control and top-up. Once the nominal net weight is reached, the nozzle closes. For a set interval afterwards the system keeps watching the settled weight, and if it has fallen below the nominal value it reopens and completes the dose — as many times as needed. This is the difference between a container that reads correct at the moment of closing and one that reads correct on the customer’s scale.
Compensation for the submerged lance. In immersion filling the nozzle can stay below the product surface — because the operator has set it to fill under the level to keep a foaming product quiet, or because, near the top of a full container, it cannot rise any further without leaving the opening. A submerged lance displaces its own volume of product, and the scale reads that displacement as weight. Close the nozzle at the nominal value, draw the lance out, and the container is suddenly tens or hundreds of grams short — a fill that looked perfect now fails the tolerance. AiCROVFill® knows where the lance is: its position is controlled, so the volume it occupies inside the product is known at every moment. The control calculates the weight that volume accounts for and doses exactly that much more before closing, so the net weight is right after the lance comes out, not only while it is still in.
Automatic compensation of the product still falling after the valve closes. When the valve closes, some product is still on its way into the container. How much depends on the machine, and on conditions outside it: supply pressure, flow rate, product temperature and viscosity. If the recipe carries a fixed value for that product, AiCROVFill® uses it. If that value is set to zero, the machine learns it: container after container it measures the result and moves the cut-off point by itself, so the batch settles on the nominal weight and stays there as conditions drift.
Recipe-based operation. Filling parameters are stored per product and per container format. Changing reference is a selection on the panel, not a readjustment of the machine.
Independent weighing per station. Each filling station controls its own weight, so that splitting the dose between two stations — or across eight, in the vertical EL2-E — never costs accuracy on the individual container.
Built from parts you can buy yourself
This machine is built with industrial components from globally distributed brands — control, pneumatics, sensors and weighing elements — with no proprietary electronics or firmware anywhere in the control chain.
This matters on the day something fails. You source the spare part yourself, in your own market, at market price. Your maintenance staff work on platforms they already know. You do not wait for a shipment from Tarragona to replace a component that is on a shelf twenty minutes from your plant.
It is a deliberate design decision, and we think a machine that holds your plant hostage is not a machine you should buy.
Safety and compliance
The machine is designed and manufactured in Europe, to European machinery safety legislation, and carries the CE marking. That is our starting point for every market we ship to. Outside the EU, most markets mirror that legislation through a transposition or an equivalent framework of essential health and safety requirements, so AiCROV starts from the same design and the same risk assessment everywhere, and adapts the marking, the declaration and the documentation to the regime of the country of installation.
The design follows the harmonised framework customary in the sector: risk assessment and risk reduction to EN ISO 12100, safety-related parts of control systems to EN ISO 13849-1, electrical equipment to EN 60204-1, emergency stop to EN ISO 13850.
The risk assessment is carried out on the configuration actually supplied, not on a generic model, and the resulting measures are built into the mechanical design, the electrical design and the control software.
The machine is fully enclosed. The mechanisms are contained within the structure itself and there are no moving parts accessible during operation. The front is closed by one door per operating position — four or six depending on the version — each with a window so the process can be followed without opening it, and with safe access interlocking.
At both ends, where the machine joins the infeed and outfeed conveyors, the container passes through a tunnel sized to the width of a drum: it lets the container through but not a person’s hand, which is the route by which the internal mechanisms could otherwise be reached from outside.
- Emergency stop — cuts power and pneumatic pressure and stops container transfer. Reset is manual and deliberate.
- Front door interlocking — opening a door stops the cycle; the equipment cannot restart while it is open.
- Passive nozzle lock.
- Safe behaviour on failure — no residual transfer, no product flow.
Every AiCROV machine and every AiCROV line can be supplied in an explosion proof version. Where the equipment is going into an area with a risk of explosive atmosphere, protection is engineered as a specific part of the project and extends to the whole assembly — structure, stations, tool holder and fitted tools, weighing system and control cabinet — under the certification scheme that applies in the country of installation: ATEX in Europe, IECEx in many other markets, NEC in the United States. Explosion proof versions are designed for Zone 1 or Zone 2 hazardous areas, or the equivalent Class I, Division 1 or 2 under NEC, depending on the project.
On an automatic line this is the difference between a compliant installation and a machine that cannot be commissioned. A protected filling head bolted to an unprotected gantry is not an explosion proof machine.
Explosion proof filling machines →
Connection parameters — voltage, frequency, neutral and earthing arrangement, electrical and compressed air connection types — and the operator panel language are defined with you during order engineering, in accordance with the regulations and the usual practice of the country of installation. The starting point is always the CE-compliant design; the local requirements are built in from the start of the order, not retrofitted afterwards.
Technical specifications
| Type | In-line automatic, sequential, weigh filling |
| Series | Advanced |
| Containers | Steel or plastic drums, 60 to 250 litres |
| Throughput | up to 130 drums/hour |
| Filling accuracy | ±0.1% of the nominal fill (to be confirmed for each case) |
| Weight scale resolution | ± 50 g |
| Inert gas filling | Available as an accessory |
| Filling assembly | Under bunghole, or immersion (the immersion assembly also fills under bunghole or from the bottom, selected by recipe) |
| Stations | Centring · uncapping · purging · filling · capping · sealing, by configuration |
| Weighing | One independent scale per filling station |
| Power | 3×380 VAC, 50–60 Hz, <12 kW (to be confirmed per project) |
| Air pressure | 6 bar (other pressures on request) |
| Working temperature | −10 °C to +45 °C |
| Product temperature | 0 °C to +130 °C |
| Product connection | 1½” male camlock |
| Weight | 3,500 kg (to be confirmed per project) |
| Enclosure | Full, one interlocked door per position |
| Explosion proof version | Available, whole assembly |
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the EL2-B reach 130 drums an hour?
It is sequential. Drums advance one position per cycle, so centring, uncapping, filling and capping all happen at the same time, each on a different drum.
What if the bunghole is off-centre or facing the wrong way?
The centring station rotates the drum on motorised wheels until a sensor detects the bunghole passing, then stops. The drum is left in a known position before anything else happens to it.
Does the cap go back on the same drum?
Yes. The uncapping head places it on a cap conveyor that carries it to the capping station.
Can it inert the drum before filling?
Yes, with a purging station: a lance is inserted to deliver inert gas before filling.
Is the conveyor line included?
No. The machine integrates into a roller line with accumulation at the infeed, sized to your plant and quoted separately.
Can it fill flammable products?
Yes, in an explosion proof version engineered for the certification scheme of the country of installation. Flammable products are normally filled with the immersion assembly, which keeps the nozzle below the product level; inert gas filling and electrostatic grounding control are available as options.
What is the difference between the EL2-B and the SP3 or the Robot Filler?
The EL2-B fills drum by drum in line at high output. The SP3 and the Robot Filler fill containers on the pallet, without unloading them, and handle mixed formats more easily.
Not sure this is the right machine?
Tell us what you fill, into what container, and how many per hour. We will tell you which model fits — and we will tell you when none of ours does.
Related projects
Real installations of our filling machines in different industries.
EL2-B-4 automatic drum filling machine for motor and lubricant oils — Indian Oil (IOCL), India
Indian Oil needed to fill motor and lubricant oils into 200-litre metal drums continuously, with no operator handling the product.
EL2-B-6 automatic drum filling and complete end of line for lubricant oil — Tyumen, Siberia, Russia
A lubricant oil producer in Siberia needed a drum line that went from the empty drum to a finished pallet, wrapped and labelled.
EL2-B-4 drum filling line with automatic palletizer for lubricant oil — Indian Oil (IOCL), India
For a second line, Indian Oil wanted drums uncapped, filled, recapped, sealed and palletized automatically, with no operator handling the product.
Explosion proof EL2-B with nitrogen inerting and grounding check for a highly flammable resin — Barcelona area, Spain
A resin producer near Barcelona needed to fill a hot, highly flammable resin into drums automatically, with no risk of ignition.
Tell us about your product and containers
We will contact you