LSB — semi-automatic weigh filling machine for drums
The nozzle does not move. The drum does.
Roll the drum onto the platform, turn it on the rollers until the bunghole sits under the nozzle, press start. That single idea is what makes the LSB the simplest reliable way to fill drums by weight: there is no head to position, no axis to motorise, and nothing to go out of alignment.
Plug & Fill series · Semi-automatic · Drums 30–250 L
Is this the machine you need?
Yes, if you fill drums or equivalent containers between thirty and two hundred and fifty litres, one at a time, handled by an operator.
No, if the drums arrive on pallets and you would rather not unload them — that is the SP1. For containers under thirty litres, the LSG. For IBCs (totes), the LSC.
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 and net weight are selected on the operator panel.
2. Filling height is adjusted to the container format, without tools.
3. The empty drum is placed on the weighing platform.
4. The operator rotates the drum on the rollers until the bunghole sits beneath the nozzle.
5. On start, the system tares automatically and fills to the net weight.
6. The full drum is removed and the next one goes on.
LSB Semi-Automatic Drum Filling Machine — 200 L Steel & Plastic | Chemical, France | AiCROV
An LSB on test before shipping to a chemical plant in France. The operator rolls each 200-litre drum onto the weighing platform and turns it until the bunghole is under the nozzle; the machine fills under the bunghole, stepping from coarse to fine to reach the target weight.
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
A self-supporting structure carries the column on which the filling head is mounted. The nozzle stays fixed; the container comes to it. The weighing terminal is integrated into the control system.
The platform is flat and fitted with free rollers, so the drum can be turned on it without lifting until the bunghole is under the nozzle. That operation is what replaces moving the filling head — and it is why this machine has no positioning axis to buy, maintain or realign.
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 structure or the filling head, 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®
Weighing a container while you fill it is not difficult. Getting the last hundred grams right, every time, on a product that foams, settles or clings to the lance, is the whole job. AiCROVFill® is the filling control AiCROV has developed and refined since its first filling machine in 2009, installation after installation.
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.
Misalignment control. If the nozzle meets resistance as it descends into the container, it returns to its upper position and waits for the operator to realign it. It does not force the container.
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.
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.
- Emergency stop — cuts electrical power and pneumatic pressure to the actuators simultaneously. Reset is manual and deliberate.
- Passive nozzle lock — without pneumatic pressure the nozzle cannot open. Loss of air or power stops the machine with the nozzle shut, not with product running.
- Safe behaviour on failure — no residual nozzle movement, no product flow.
Every AiCROV machine can be supplied in an explosion proof version. Where the machine is going into an area with a risk of explosive atmosphere, that protection is engineered as a specific part of the project, 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.
This is not a variant we assemble occasionally. Most of the explosion proof machines AiCROV has installed are in plants that also run standard machines from us — the same customer, two versions, depending on which room the machine stands in.
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 | Semi-automatic, weigh (gravimetric) filling |
| Series | Plug & Fill |
| Containers | Drums and equivalent, 30 to 250 litres |
| Throughput | 65 drums/hour (220 L) |
| 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) |
| Height adjustment | 550 mm, servo |
| Power | 240 V, 50–60 Hz, 0.5 kW |
| 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 | 300 kg |
| Explosion proof version | Available |
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the LSB position the drum under the nozzle?
The nozzle is fixed. The drum sits on free rollers and the operator turns it until the bunghole is underneath. No positioning axis, nothing to realign.
How many drums per hour?
65 drums of 220 litres per hour, nominal.
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. The assembly is chosen when the machine is ordered.
What happens if the air fails mid-fill?
The nozzle closes. It needs pneumatic pressure to open, so a loss of air stops the machine with the nozzle shut.
What is the difference between the LSB and the SP1?
The LSB fills one drum at a time on its platform. The SP1 takes a complete pallet and the operator moves the filling head from container to container.
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.
LSB semi-automatic drum filler for aquaculture nutrition products — Norway
A Norwegian producer of nutrition ingredients for salmon, marine fish and shrimp feed needed to fill drums of several sizes accurately and hygienically.
LSB semi-automatic drum filler with roller conveyors, for a chemical producer in France
A chemical producer in France needed a simple, accurate way to fill 200-litre drums, steel and plastic, one after another without a forklift between drums.
Tell us about your product and containers
We will contact you