Barry-Wehmiller is defined by a simple goal - to provide our customers with the best technology available, with the definition of "best" expressed as quality processes and lifetime cost figures.

Among many examples of Barry Wehmiller technology, the following perhaps best exemplifies our approach:

• PU Limiting - Barry-Wehmiller utilizes a very simple principle for PU limiting. If the machine is stopped and the product can't travel to the cooling sprays, we bring the cooling sprays to the product. To describe it in the simplest terms, we pump water from the cooler zones to the sprays in the heating/holding zones sequentially, with the timing based on the normal rate of passage for the product. In this manner, we ensure that both the PU accumulation number and the time-temperature profile are held steady in all circumstances. This is a simple concept that's easy to understand and that provides the customer with extremely reliable product.

Advanced PU Control

• Single Heat Exchanger System - This is based on another simple principle: Why use multiple heat exchangers when you can use one, saving in maintenance and capital costs, plus improving control. Water flows from a feeder sump through a heat exchanger via a set of modulating control valves, to any part of the machine that requires heating. Water is returned to the feeder sump through simple gravity feeds. Direct control of the heating medium gives very exact control. All condensate is returned to the boiler house, minimizing maintenance requirements. In summary, the Single Heat Exchanger System simultaneously enhances process control, saving energy and minimizing maintenance costs.
  More details can be found here

Single Heat Exchanger

• Dynamic Bottle Cleaning - To maximize bottle cleaning, we bombard the inside of the bottle with intermittent high pressure jets - 200 pulses per minute. From experimentation, Barry-Wehmiller knows that intermittent high pressure jets are much more effective than continuous jets of the same pressure. To maximize the jetting efficiency, the jets are fitted in special racks that track the progress of the bottle for a considerable period of time, jetting into the bottle interior at the same time. To create the pressure pulses, a deceptively simple disc valve is used. A dedicated drive spins a special floating polymer disc against a specially treated steel surface. The floating disc has two holes in it. When these align with the multiple holes in the steel manifold plate, a pulse of high pressure fluid travels through the jetting system to impact the inside of the bottle. The simple application of the disc valve and rack systems enables Barry-Wehmiller to have a much stronger mechanical cleaning element than competing machines, with little increase in maintenance costs.

• Electronically Linked Bottle Washer Drive Systems  - To minimize maintenance and maximize main chain life, Barry-Wehmiller created an extremely sophisticated electronic drive system. First used on a 3000 BPM washer, it has proven to be extremely reliable, and easy and inexpensive to maintain. Each drive shaft has a motor-gearbox unit with a dedicated VFD. All drives rotate constantly under the control of their own VFDs with frequencies being checked against a master VFD. There is no intermittent motion in the system driving the gearboxes through load/unload cycles. Cycling of this nature is a notorious way of breaking gearboxes. Additionally, a PLC-based system monitors shaft positions at all times. The main carrier chain is driven as gently as possible and either speed or positional discrepancies will warn the operator, or if of sufficient magnitude, stop the machine, long before any permanent damage occurs. 
  
  The use of the VFD system also greatly eases main chain slack adjustment, by allowing sequential adjustment of slack via an electronic jogging command.   

Electronically Driven Bottle Cleaner

All four examples typify the Barry-Wehmiller philosophy to take a rigorous engineering approach when developing customer solutions.