Clearance Gauge - quick and accurate double seamer setup

There are rising pressures for companies to produce better products and run their canning lines harder, while lowering costs. Today, Quality Assurance for double seams consists of taking cans off the line after the can seamer, checking the double seams using a double seam scope, and making adjustments if there are any critical problems on the can seamer. Some canning companies are increasing their seam checks and subsequently have to stop the line more, or use expensive systems like X-rays or online systems to ensure more seams are within tolerance.

Isn't it a better idea to simply produce better seams rather than checking more often for bad ones?

The software allows you to do predictive maintenance on your seamers before they go out of whack... The Clearance gauge is not like any other inspection software!

Most of your double seams are going to be good, so you're actually checking close to 99.99% good products! So, what will you accomplish by checking more cans for seam defects, except slowing down your production?

Today

Today, most companies use feeler gauges (see animation on the right), to try and determine if there is enough distance between the roll and chuck. Of course, this is a very inaccurate procedure and cannot produce accurate results even in the hands of the most experienced operators. Similarly innacurate methods are used for adjusting the roll height. More often than not, rolls need to be readjusted after the first seam check and as the machine warms up.

For vertical (roll height) adjustment, most companies use a vertical "pin gauge height" to position the roll and chuck. However, each of these measurements affect one another because of the  shapes of the roll and chuck profiles!

The Clearance Gauge

The Clearance Gauge takes a completely different approach to the problem. Instead of focusing on checking seams after the double seam is already closed, the Clearance Gauge helps optimize the can seaming process by taking out variations between the different seamer heads and optimizing the seamer itself!

 Our first products were for the popular Angelus can seamer models, like the Angelus 120/121L and the Angelus 60L can seamer.

This tool helps produce much better double seams - faster. Instead of increasing the rate and frequency of seam scope checks. For the first time, you can see what your can seamer is doing before you even start running cans through the line!

Conclusions

Whereas most settings on the double seamer, such as lifter pressure and height are easy to adjust, the roll height off the chuck and the tightness (the lateral distance between the roll and chuck on the high point), which are the most important parameters for the seam setup, are very difficult to set up.

Until today, experienced operators used feeler gauges, but the process was long and very inaccurate - resulting in bad and inconsistent seams, seamers going out of specs quickly and various problems that could not be easily traced.

Problems in 1^st operation were often corrected by 2^nd operation settings. This often increased the variation between seamer heads and ultimately resulted in more bad seams and more seamer stops.

The Clearance gauge solves all of these problems by offering an easy solution to seamer optimization and adjustment.

Public files

Video