Ideally suited for handling powders, granules, tablets, capsules and other pharmaceutical items, vacuum pneumatic conveyors can also be designed to deliver closures and moderate-sized containers to filling lines. The photo to the right shows three special feedbins from which plastic screw caps are conveyed to various filling lines in a plant. Vacuum receivers located above each capping machine discharge caps directly into the hoppers on the machines.
Vac-U-Max provided a unique solution to a personal products manufacturer's problem of getting 16-ounce plastic containers to the filling line. The route from the receiving area to the filling line was impractical for a mechanical conveyor because of its length and changes in direction and elevation. Bottles enter the vacuum conveyor tubing from an orientation machine shown at the right. The six-inch conveying tubing runs along walls and near ceilings, well clear of active production areas. The bottles are rapidly carried in the negative pressure air stream around corners and between floors to a special "clamshell" receiver, shown at the left. Here they are discharged into a hopper at the head of the filling line.