Washdown Dairy Tub Application

A dairy company headquartered in Pennsylvania was facing rising costs associated with the purchase and application of preprinted labels for its ice cream products, The dairy company turned to FOX IV Technologies to develop a fully-automated system that would lower those costs and reduce employee time invested in the hand-labeling process.

The dairy company wanted to automatically print and apply labels that identified its ice cream product, product weight and manufacturing date. The labels were to be applied to the top and side of 3-1/2" and 5" round, gallon cartons of ice cream in a washdown environment. The label data had to be streamed to the system without benefit of a connected PC. Furthermore, occasionally the conveyor system delivered an ice cream cartons without a lid - thus complicating the top-application routine in the system. They needed a no lid-no label routine in the system.

FOX IV Technologies devised a solution to solve the dairy company's dilemma. To address the pre-printed label issue FOX IV provided two of its own label printer applicators; one to print and apply a top label and the other, a side label. Each was mounted on a stand in a FOX IV environmental enclosure designed for a washdown environment.

To prevent a problem with a "no lid" situation, a series of sensors located within the conveyor area detect the presence of a lid on the drum of ice cream. If no lid is found a "disable application" function is initiated and no label is applied to the top of the drum.

To handle the label data, FOX IV provided a label design software package on a remote PC. This label design data is uploaded daily to a FOX IV hand-held device for the day's production. That data is then downloaded to each label printer applicator.

With the FOX IV system the dairy company can automatically meet their production requirements to print and apply labels to 25 to 30 drums per minute.