Centor (Millersburg,OH) is one of the leading suppliers of caps and bottles used for prescription medications. They manufacture containers in all shapes and sizes for pills and liquids you would be prescribed at your local pharmacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ken Sigler has worked for the healthcare division of Centor for over 18 years. During his typical day he assists machine operators having equipment issues, practices routine maintenance check-ups, fixes equipment and looks for ways to improve processes on Centor\u2019s manufacturing lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Centor\u2019s services also include the printing of instructions or branding required on the caps. This process became a chronic pain for Sigler. He was experiencing melting caps and inconsistent print adhesion. Attempts to fix the problem were just a temporary band-aid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To enable the ink to adhere to the polypropylene caps, Centor pretreats them using a flame surface treater. It is an essential part of their process because polypropylene has very low surface energy. Without it, the ink would bead up and wipe off instead of sticking to the surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Centor uses Kase and Desco printers to dry, offset print with solvent inks. The printers already had flame burners installed when they were purchased, however, they required a small gap between the cap and the flame burner to be effective. After further examination, this proved to be the culprit of the symptoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The caps were melting due to the close proximity of the flame. Cap misfires were also bumping the flame burner out of position. Readjusting or fixing the flamer burners were becoming a daily occurrence. And each time required the entire line to be shutdown resulting in a loss of productivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We were answering 20 to 30 (service) calls per month with average downtime 22 hours per month,” explains Sigler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n