Problem & answerK-10
Bottles Leaving the Capper Without Caps
Also covers: Cap chute sensor not working
Likely causes
- Blue cap sensor on the cap chute dirty or misaligned
- Sensor sensitivity wrong for the cap colour or material
- Sensor bracket moved
- Cable or sensor fault
How to fix it
- 1Stop the line immediately.
- 2Segregate all bottles that passed the capper since the last good check and inspect for missing caps.
- 3Clean the cap sensor lens.
- 4Check the sensor aims at the caps in the chute (red light spot on the cap).
- 5Check the LED: caps present gives one state, chute empty gives the other.
- 6Adjust the sensitivity until it detects caps reliably and shows empty when there are none.
- 7Test: let the cap chute run empty. The capper infeed wheel must stop and hold the bottles back so no bottle leaves without a cap (K-18).
- 8Restart only when the test passes.
Technical note
The blue cap sensor tells the capper that caps are in the chute. When the chute runs out, it stops the capper so no bottle goes out without a cap. If it fails, bottles keep going through and leave uncapped.Photos
It is fixed when
Capper stops whenever the chute is empty; no uncapped bottles leave the machine.
Stop it coming back
- Function-test the cap sensor at every start-up by letting the chute run empty.
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