SP3 — automatic filling machine for drums and IBCs on a pallet
With the Robot Filler, this is the most automated machine we build. The operator does not intervene during the cycle and does not enter the filling area, and depending on the tools fitted the machine also uncaps, caps and seals.
The difference from the Robot Filler is the motion technology, not what the machine does. Here it is a Cartesian gantry instead of an anthropomorphic robot: rectilinear movement, simple mechanics, guided travel.
Advanced series · Automatic · Containers on pallet
Is this the machine you need?
Yes, if you want a filling point with nobody standing at it, on drums and IBCs (totes) that arrive on pallets, and you want uncapping, capping and sealing in the same station.
No, if containers of very different formats share the same line and need to be reached at different orientations — the Robot Filler handles that without mechanical adjustment. And no, if an operator at the station is not a problem: the SP25 gets you most of the way for less.
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 cycle parameters are selected on the operator panel.
2. Pallets of empty containers are placed on the infeed conveyor.
3. The pallet enters the filling station and is positioned on the weighing conveyor.
4. Container positions are located: with the standard system, the operator teaches them with the joystick as each pallet enters; with machine vision, the machine finds them itself.
5. The head positions over each container, adjusts the working height by motor to the detected height, and performs the fitted operations — uncapping, filling, capping, sealing.
6. Once the pallet is complete it is discharged, the next enters, and the cycle continues.
7. Full pallets are collected at the end of the line.
Automatic Drum & IBC Filling Machine SP3 — Hot Melt Adhesive at 130°C | AiCROV
An SP3 filling hot melt adhesive at around 130 °C into drums and IBCs, with no operator handling the product. This one carries the filling tool and a clean-in-place system, with room on the tool holder for uncapping, capping and sealing later.
More videos of this machine
Other installations and configurations, filmed in our workshop and at customer sites.
Automatic Drum & IBC Filling Line SP3 — Decap, Fill & Cap, Explosion-Proof | Chemical | AiCROV
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 equipment is built around a two-axis Cartesian gantry carrying the filling unit and the tools, with motorised adjustment of working height. Movement is rectilinear and the mechanics are simple, with guided travel.
The tool holder has four positions, one occupied by the filling unit, so up to three additional tools can be fitted. It is the same tool holder and the same tool set the Robot Filler uses: a typical configuration combines filling with drum uncapping and capping, IBC uncapping and capping, and drum sealing.
The X axis of the machine is a 2,000 mm chain weighing conveyor that belongs to the equipment, not to the conveyor line. Its drive includes electronic position control, so the pallet stops with repeatable accuracy beneath the filling unit without mechanical stops. Weighing is by four hermetically sealed stainless steel load cells, with the terminal integrated into the control system.
Bunghole location is by joystick teaching as standard: as each pallet enters, the operator teaches each container position and the machine then runs the complete cycle with no intervention. Positions are taught pallet by pallet because the bunghole is not in the same place on every container. The machine vision system, which locates the bungholes by itself and makes the equipment fully automatic, is an accessory and not part of the standard supply.
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 tool holder, 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.
Container position control. The working height is adjusted by motor to the height detected on each container, so the nozzle always enters at the correct level.
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.
As an automatic machine that works with no operator inside it, the perimeter safety enclosure is part of the supply and is not optional: 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.
- Emergency stop — cuts power and pneumatic pressure to the actuators and stops the axes and the conveyors. Reset is manual and deliberate.
- Access interlocking — opening an enclosure door stops the cycle, and the equipment cannot restart while the access is open.
- Passive nozzle lock.
- Safe behaviour on failure — no residual axis movement, no conveyor drift, 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 | Automatic, weigh filling, Cartesian gantry |
| Series | Advanced |
| Containers | Drums 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) |
| Operations | Filling · uncapping · capping · sealing, by tool fitted |
| Tool holder | 4 positions, one occupied by the filling unit |
| X axis | 2,000 mm chain weighing conveyor with electronic position control |
| Weighing | 4 hermetically sealed stainless steel load cells |
| Bunghole location | Joystick teaching standard · machine vision as accessory |
| Power | approx. 5 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 | approx. 1,500 kg (to be confirmed per project) |
| Safety enclosure | Included, not optional |
| Explosion proof version | Available, whole assembly |
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 the difference between the SP3 and the Robot Filler?
The motion technology, not the function. The SP3 uses a Cartesian gantry — rectilinear, simple, guided. The Robot Filler uses an anthropomorphic robot, which reaches any point of the pallet at any orientation and handles mixed container formats without mechanical adjustment.
Does the SP3 find the bungholes by itself?
With the standard system the operator teaches them with the joystick as each pallet enters, and the machine runs the rest of the pallet alone. With the machine vision accessory, it finds them itself and needs nobody.
Can it cap and seal as well as fill?
Yes. The tool holder has four positions, one taken by the filling unit, so up to three tools can be fitted — drum uncapping and capping, IBC uncapping and capping, drum sealing.
Is the safety enclosure included?
Yes. On an automatic machine it is part of the supply, not an option.
Can it fill flammable products?
Yes. The explosion proof version covers the whole machine, including the tool holder and its tools, under 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.
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.
SP3 Filling Hot Melt Adhesive at 130 °C into Drums and IBCs — Synthesia Española, Spain
Synthesia needed to fill hot melt adhesive at around 130 °C into drums and IBCs, with no operator handling a product that hot.
Explosion Proof SP3 Line for Polyols — Decap, Fill and Recap Drums and IBCs for Croda Ibérica, Spain
Croda needed to fill polyols into drums and IBCs in a hazardous area, and wanted to keep forklifts out of the production hall.
Tell us about your product and containers
We will contact you