26.Aug.2009 at 26 | 2 Comments
DIY Bottle Capper
One of my goals as I grow PunkMedics is to maximize production and continuity between production runs. We are steadily growing every year and I want to ensure I can meet demand while still keeping most of our manufacturing in-house. With an increase in orders I’m always looking to speed up daily production, automate specific processes or reduce strain from repetitive tasks.
Last year we purchased some hand operated filling machines. This sped up bottle filling and volume accuracy between bottles. We paid for the equipment within 3 months just from savings in time.
This year I wanted to focus on Bottle capping. Over the last few years we’ve standardized our packaging to the point we only have 3 cap sizes and all of them are 24mm in diameter. This would make purchasing a capping machine easier and I’d only need a single chuck to handle all my caps.
When looking for a machine I was hoping for a hand held capper to give me flexibility in how we ran our production line. There are Pneumatic and electric cappers available currently on the market.
I chose the electric capper mainly because I don’t want the noise of air compressors in the studio or hose lines running through out the space. Electric cappers run a few hundred dollars more then pneumatic ones. The cheapest electric capper I could find was well over $1500 while the pneumatic systems ran around $1000 but you would need the compressor and hoses etc so the price is pretty much identical.
Either way $1500 for a unit was too much of an expenditure on one piece of equipment right now even though it would speed up production time and reduce repetetive strain. I calculated that the pay back on one system is about 12 months. Not bad but still more than I wanted to spend.
I shelved the idea till recently when I looked at the cappers in more detail and thought why cant I make one myself. I like the challenge of making something on my own and I should be able to make it for half the price.
Some online research on handheld cappers showed that they all tend to look like dremels or cordless screwdrivers with a chuck and rubber insert in them for gripping the cap. Specs showed them to be about 2lbs and ran around 1000 rpm and had variable torque range from 6.9-21.7 in-lb to not strip the caps threading.
You can see here what an electric system looks like.
Doing more online research on the chucks I also found that most of the chucks were using 1/4″ hex bits which are also standard for cordless screwdrivers and drills. Here is what the chuck looks like from the machine.
This made no sense. Why should a unit should cost $1500 when I can purchase most of the parts for around $100 and cobble a basic system together. I could even get a chuck machined for me if I could draw up a basic design.
I figured before investing in having parts machined etc I should make a proof of concept from some basic hardware store finds and a capping machine liner which you can find easily online.
Here is my version of a $1500 machine which cost me about $200. Now that I know how to make it I think I can easily make another for about $125.
So how does it work? Surprisingly well but in this case it hasn’t sped up production much. What it has done is reduce the repetative strain on my wrist when doing hundreds of bottles a day.
I think overall a successful build and a new tool that will help in automating production.
Next project is a manual bottle labeler
