SP25 — weigh filling machine with motorised nozzle positioning
This is the machine in the range where the operator stops moving the head by hand. Travel in X, in Y and in height is motorised and governed from the control system.
And that opens a question the rest of the range does not have to answer: how often should the machine need a person? The SP25 is offered at three levels, and choosing between them is the real decision.
Compact series · Motorised positioning · Containers on pallet
Is this the machine you need?
Yes, if positioning the head by hand is what tires your operator or slows your line, and you want to choose how much of the attention the machine gives back.
No, if you fill few pallets and manual positioning costs you nothing — the SP1 or SP2 do the same filling for less. And no, if you already know you want nobody there: go straight to the SP3 or the Robot Filler.
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.
Three levels of automation
Joystick alignment. The operator places the nozzle over the bunghole with the joystick and commands filling. During filling they are free, but the machine needs them again at the end of every container. This level removes the physical effort of positioning while keeping container-by-container control.
Joystick alignment with position memory. As each pallet comes in, the operator teaches the position of every bunghole with the joystick. The machine then fills the containers one after another with no intervention and, on finishing, discharges the pallet and takes the next one. The operator is needed once per pallet instead of once per container.
Machine vision system (accessory, not part of the standard supply). The machine locates the bunghole of each container by itself, with no positions to teach. The equipment becomes fully automatic and the operator is no longer required for filling.
Why the level of automation matters
The bunghole is not in the same place on every container of a pallet. Each drum may have ended up turned differently. That is why position memory is taught pallet by pallet and not once and for all — and why machine vision, which finds the bunghole on its own, is the only level that removes the intervention completely.
The practical consequence is how much operator time the machine consumes. With the joystick, the operator is tied to the station and only has the gaps between containers. With position memory, they have the time of a whole pallet. With machine vision, they can prepare several uncapped pallets at the infeed and handle capping and sealing at the outfeed, coming back to the machine only after a good while.
The return on this machine is not calculated on throughput alone. It is calculated on how many different tasks the same operator can attend to while it fills.
How it works
1. Filling recipe and net weight are selected on the operator panel.
2. The pallet of empty containers is placed in the filling station.
3. Depending on the level of automation, the operator aligns the nozzle over each container, teaches the pallet positions once, or does not intervene at all.
4. The system tares automatically and fills to the net weight.
5. The sequence repeats for each container on the pallet.
6. The full pallet is removed and the next one comes in.
AiCROV – SP25 – Automatic Drum and IBC Filling Machine
The SP25 filling drums and IBCs on a pallet within an automatic conveyor line, with motorised nozzle positioning on three axes.
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 filling head — dosing group and actuation — on two independent linear axes in X and Y plus the vertical axis. All three are motorised, and that is the constructive difference from the machines where the operator moves the head by hand. The weighing terminal is integrated into the control system.
Weighing allows two arrangements. With a floor scale, in any of the versions available for the SP1, the machine works as a stand-alone station and the pallet is placed with a forklift. Integrated into a conveyor line, as in the SP2, pallets enter and leave without handling and without the operator accessing the filling area. The conveyor line is 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 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®
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, it returns to its upper position and stops the sequence, alerting the operator, without damaging the container or the equipment.
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 power and pneumatic pressure to the actuators and stops the motorised axes. Reset is manual and deliberate.
- Control of the motorised axes — head movement is supervised from the control system and stops on a misalignment or on the opening of an access to the enclosure.
- Passive nozzle lock.
- Safe behaviour on failure — no residual axis movement, no product flow.
From the position memory level onwards the machine fills with no operator in front of it, and the perimeter safety enclosure becomes a necessary part of the installation: fencing with interlocked access doors and photoelectric barriers with muting at container entry and exit, so product passing through does not stop the machine while a person entering does. It is selected separately.
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 | Weigh filling, motorised positioning on three axes |
| Series | Compact |
| Containers | Drums, kegs, pails, canisters and IBCs, on a pallet, 20 to 1,500 litres (5 to 400 gal) |
| Throughput | 65 drums/hour (220 L) · 15 IBC/hour (1,200 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) |
| Automation levels | Joystick · joystick with position memory · machine vision (accessory) |
| Weighing | Floor scale or integrated into a conveyor line |
| Height adjustment | 550 mm, servo |
| Power | 240 V, 50–60 Hz, <1 kW (to be confirmed per project — depends on the conveyor layout) |
| 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 | 900 kg (to be confirmed per project) |
| Explosion proof version | Available |
Filling throughput is set by the product and the container, not by the model: when they only fill, the SP1, SP2, SP25, SP3 and Robot Filler reach the same cadence, around 60–65 drums per hour. What changes between models is the level of automation. When the machine also uncaps and caps the container, as the SP3 and the Robot Filler can, the cadence is lower.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is position memory?
As each pallet arrives, the operator teaches the position of every bunghole with the joystick. The machine then fills the whole pallet with no further intervention. It has to be taught pallet by pallet because the bunghole is not in the same place on every drum.
Is the machine vision system included?
No. It is an accessory. It is what makes the SP25 fully automatic, because it locates every bunghole without teaching.
Does the SP25 need a safety enclosure?
From the position memory level onwards, yes — the machine fills with nobody in front of it, so fencing with interlocked doors and light barriers becomes part of the installation. It is quoted separately.
How is the SP25 different from the SP3?
The SP25 motorises the head on three axes but still works from taught positions unless you add vision. The SP3 is a Cartesian gantry that also uncaps, caps and seals.
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, and electrostatic grounding control is available as an option.
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.
SP25 behind a safety fence, with joystick nozzle positioning, for water-treatment chemicals — Nalco Water, an Ecolab company, USA
Nalco Water needed to fill aggressive water-treatment chemicals into drums and IBCs while keeping the operator away from the filling area.
SP25 with titanium nozzle for aggressive water-treatment chemicals — Barcelona area, Spain
A water-treatment company near Barcelona needed to fill aggressive chemicals into drums and IBCs with materials that would stand up to them.
Tell us about your product and containers
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