The principle underlying the new system brings a considerable reduction in the idle time required for raising and lowering the head preforming the bottle rows. In fact the operation of loading and unloading is effected once for every three inlets as opposed to once for every inlet, as happened with previous systems. The head for preparing the bottle rows consists of a number of guides three times the number of inlets. The head moves a step for each inlet and, only when all the guides have been filled, deposits the layer of bottles on the compacting and transfer table.

This system increases productivity since the number of inlets can be varied according to production needs, which at present can reach a maximum of five inlets. Upstream the bottle flow is regulated by air conveyors. The inlet starwheels effect a differential count of the bottles (according to the principle of staggering) simultaneously being fed from the conveyors to the guides.Lastly, productivity can be further raised thanks to the use of a robot equipped with a gripping tool at the wrist, which reloads from multiple preforming tables, instead of single tables, and then palletizes in a single zone.

Format changeovers in the row preforming area are mostly done automatically from the operator panel. The movements of raising and lowering, as well as the shifting of the preforming head are carried out by brushless motors. The controlled axes guarantee that format changeover operations are carried out extremely precisely. As for the palletizing robots, they also have great flexibility in terms of adjusting to format changes. Sidel has designed a self-adjusting head so that variations in the inter-axis between the rows (which change according to the bottle diameter) can be made by software. Alternatively, for very heterogeneous formats the whole head may be replaced, again in entirely automated mode, from the operating panel.

For medium to high speed production this new generation of palletizers is thus the most advanced solution in terms of efficiency and speed. The rated output is 27,000 bph for 1.5 L bottles, rising up to 40,000 bph for 0.5 L formats (for a four-inlet system with a 1120 x 1420 cm pallet). Higher figures can be obtained when using multiple preforming tables.