Company: Piab

Website: www.piab.com

Equipment Snapshot: Offering six times faster changeover, Piab’s Changeover Champion vacuum conveyor piFLOW SMART enables users to save time when changing from one material to another, increasing the productivity of their operations. Changeover that would take one hour in a conventional vacuum conveyor takes only 10 minutes in the company’s new and unique vacuum conveyor.

A world first, piFLOW SMART is a self-optimizing vacuum conveyor targeted primarily at industries handling many different materials and/or those in which frequent changes need to be made. This makes the conveyor ideally suited for producers within the food and pharma sectors, where its full changeover potential will have great impact, saving time and money.

With each new conveying cycle, the piFLOW SMART will prove its name, using machine learning to automatically tune the process by configuring and optimizing a flawless flow of materials, set at the correct rate.

“After just a few cycles, piFLOW SMART has figured out what type of material it is dealing with and will automatically adjust itself to optimize how the material is conveyed. There is no longer a need for operators to re-adjust settings between different batches of materials. piFLOW SMART will do it for you with higher accuracy than even the most experienced operator can deliver,” explains Milan Bratt, product manager vacuum conveying.

piFLOW SMART is a stand-alone system that has been designed to cater for an endless range of different powders and granules. Strategically placed sensors assist the conveyor’s auto-tuning system to control and fine-tune in accordance with environmental conditions, such as temperature and humidity that affect the properties of the conveyed material. By automatically adjusting the carrying air, the piFLOW SMART vacuum conveyor eliminates the need for manual adjustments at the feed point. The filling level is also constantly monitored by two level sensors, safeguarding against filter damage.

Requiring only a minimal amount of maintenance, piFLOW SMART is easy to install, learn to use and operate. It is the smart choice and the ultimate conveyor for industries handling many different materials, where given a chance Piab’s Changeover Champion will prove to be the perfect performance and productivity promoter.