SP1 — semi-automatic weigh filling machine for containers on a pallet

Is this the machine you need?

Yes, if you fill drums, kegs, pails, canisters or IBCs (totes) that arrive and leave on pallets; you fill them a pallet at a time; and an operator is at the filling point anyway.

No, if you handle containers one by one — the LSG, LSB and LSC are simpler and cheaper for that. And no, if you need pallets to move themselves: that is the SP2. If the operator should not have to position the head at all, the SP25. If nobody should be there, the SP3 or the Robot Filler.

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 pallet of empty containers is placed on the weighing platform.

4. The operator presses the release button and moves the filling head until the nozzle is over the container opening. On releasing the button, the head locks in place.

5. On start, the system tares automatically and fills to the net weight.

6. Alignment and filling repeat for each container on the pallet.

7. The full pallet is removed and a new cycle begins.

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.

Two versions: SP1 and SP1 two-axis

In the standard SP1 one axis pivots and the other is linear, so moving from one bunghole to the next means adjusting both axes and aiming again. In the two-axis version the axes are independent: X and Y move separately.

That matters when the pallet carries small containers in a grid — canisters of 20, 30 or 60 litres arranged 3 × 3, 4 × 4 or 3 × 4. Once the operator is lined up on a row or a column, filling the rest of that row means moving one axis only. When the row is finished, they move to the next one and again move a single axis.

For drums and IBCs, where there are few containers per pallet, the standard version is enough. For pallets of small containers the two-axis version is markedly easier for the operator, and over a full shift it means many more containers filled.

SP1 2-Axis (X–Y) Semi-Automatic Filler — Drums, IBCs, Jerrycans, Pails | AiCROV

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.

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 power and pneumatic pressure to the actuators simultaneously. Reset is manual and deliberate.
• Head braked by default — the filling head stays locked except while the operator holds the release control. It cannot drift during filling.
• Passive nozzle lock — without pneumatic pressure the nozzle cannot open.
• Safe behaviour on failure — no residual head 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.

Frequently Asked Questions