Can buckle tester enhanced on food industry demand

15-Jan-2010 - Last updated on 14-Mar-2017 at 13:24 GMT

CMC-Kuhnke said its range of buckle testers originally developed for beverage cans has been enhanced to work with two-piece food containers on industry demand.

The US-based company announced its new DRT-1000DG semi-automatic machines can now be used to test both drawn, redrawn (DRD) and drawn and ironed (D+I) cans.

“This gauge was originally built for use with beverage cans, but the demand of the food filler has encouraged CMC-Kuhnke to develop an adapted gauge to cater to the 2-piece food can filler,” a company spokeswoman told FoodProductionDaily.com.

A buckle tester measures the exact pressure at which the bottom of the can begins to buckle and breaks open. CMC-Kuhnke's machine comes equipped with a growth measurement facility. This gauges the rate of movement in the can's structure – known as deflection - as pressure increases. The equipment's Buckle Force & Growth Measurement Test results may be read from the tester's digital display or transmitted to a computer via the RS232 computer interface, said the company.

“The buckle tester basically creates a graph that measures movement over time with increased pressure,” added the spokeswoman.

Time-saving

The machine is semi-automatic in as much as the can must be placed on the gauge manually by an operative who then presses the “measure” button.

“From that point on, all measurement and graphic representation is done automatically” explained the spokeswoman. “This eliminates any human error from the measuring process. It is just putting the can in place that needs to be done manually.”

The tester also uses the company’s latest Quick-Fill Technology, which is designed to save time while maintaining the accuracy of the test. Testers with Quick-Fill can rapidly increase the test pressure from atmosphere to a preset amount. Once at the starting pressure the tester automatically reduces the fill rate in order to maximum accuracy.

The CMC-Kuhnke spokeswoman said: “Cans are able take a certain amount of pressure without any change. Quick-Fill is basically a time saver, that quickly brings the pressure to a set-point. If the end is known to burst around ‘X’ pressure, the feature quickly brings the pressure close to this, and then slows down to small increments to start recording data.”

She added that if the machine just built up pressure incrementally starting at zero, the waiting time to get close to the critical point where the can is affected would be increased.