It's canny: Affordable machines designed to run fast and flawless

Angelus Sanitary Can Machine Company

Solid Edge® helps Angelus Sanitary Can Machine Co. design machines that seal food and beverage cans at up to 3,000 cans per minute in a complex yet flawless operation.

Complex machinery rapidly closes cans (without spilling a drop)

Attaching a metal lid to a full can of beer is a two-stage mechanical operation that must be carried out at high speed without spilling a drop of “product.” Angelus Sanitary Can Machine Company is a leading global manufacturer of the machines that do this. The machines are called “seamers” or “closers” and Angelus has been making them since 1910. That year, Henry Louis Guenther, a Los Angeles inventor and manufacturer, introduced machines capable of forming double metal seams that satisfy the requirements of modern food and beverage processing. Solder was not required with double-seamed seals, which is why the term “sanitary” was used.

Angelus offers an extensive line of seamers for closing all kinds of cans. Leading food and beverage producers around the world use Angelus machines, which have a reputation for being durable and reliable. And fast! The fastest machine currently available is from Angelus. It is the company’s 180S, typically used for beer and other beverages, which is rated up to 3,000 cans per minute. Angelus also makes machines for closing non-food products, and some of the company’s machines are used by the can manufacturers themselves. Each machine is custom-built for the client, and often a single machine is designed to accommodate different sizes of cans.

Addressing design complexity and customer demands

Designing these machines is tricky business because they are highly complex assemblies that must operate flawlessly at high speeds. Customers are continually seeking even faster throughput. Their other requirements are ease of maintenance and affordable prices. Since 2001, Angelus has been using Solid Edge solid modeling software from Siemens PLM Software to design its machines. “We needed to move from our outdated 2D CAD program to 3D,” says Luisito Chong, manager of production engineering at Angelus. “We wanted the productivity gains and the superior visualization that 3D offers so we could continue to meet our customers’ requests.”

A four-person evaluation team narrowed the choice to four solid modeling systems, and then narrowed it again to just two. “We chose Solid Edge because we felt more comfortable with its business stability as part of Siemens,” says Chong. Other features of Solid Edge that were important in its selection were its built-in data management capabilities, process-specific sheet metal design environment and the level of pre- and post-sale support offered by Siemens.

Angelus has 31 licenses of Solid Edge in use at its Los Angeles headquarters. Using Solid Edge, designers model individual components as solids and then combine them into subassemblies. A seaming machine has many subassemblies, the most important being the seaming turret. It contains an upper turret (the seaming turret) and a lower turret (the lifter turret), which is mounted on a center column supported top and bottom by high-precision heavy-duty ball bearings. The turrets house the seaming spindles (chuck spindles), seaming levers, seaming rolls, knockout pads and lower chucks (lifters). In all, there are thousands of individual parts, and each of the subassemblies is a high-precision unit. Accurate alignment of components is critical to good double seaming performance; any misalignment can result in can body buckling, skidding cans (dead heads) and general poor seam quality and machine performance.

Time-saving features and better visualization

One of the main benefits of working in Solid Edge is that it is now much easier to visualize how all the different individual components fit together into subassemblies, and how the subassemblies interact with one another in the context of the entire machine. “With solid models, it is easier to see interferences and we find them earlier in the design process,” says Chong. “That saves us money because we don’t need as much rework.” Another important outcome of the visualization is more effective design reviews. People can easily grasp design concepts when they see 3D models; it is much easier than trying to interpret 2D drawings. The superior visualization of 3D also helps Angelus meet customer requests for easy maintenance. With Solid Edge, designers can visualize the virtual machine as it will look to future mechanics. Then they can fine-tune the placement of serviceable areas for their convenience.

Solid Edge’s family of parts feature is a big time-saver for Angelus. “We use that a lot in our line of work because many of the components of a machine are dictated by the sizes of the cans it will handle,” explains Chong. “Solid Edge lets us simply change a variable, such as the size of the can or the diameter of the can, and the software automatically generates new parts for us.”

Angelus’ machines have quite a bit of sheet metal and this is one area where Solid Edge has delivered a real productivity advantage. The sheet metal design environment was quite easy to learn, according to Chong, and it streamlines the creation of sheet metal parts by walking the designer through the process. “Its ability to automatically unfold a sheet metal part is the most valuable and time-saving feature,” says Chong. Another time-saving feature is Solid Edge’s ability to quickly calculate the weight of parts and subassemblies. Weight is always in the minds of machine designers at Angelus (with the biggest machine weighing 18,000 pounds) because they must take shipping and operator ergonomics into account as they create these machines. In the past, those calculations were often time-consuming. Now the information is available from Solid Edge automatically.

Solid Edge is helping Angelus meet its customers’ demands for lower prices on its machines. “When it comes to costs, Solid Edge helps us hold them down because we require fewer design iterations now,” says Chong. “We don’t have to keep on redesigning and redesigning.” For a company such as Angelus that must balance machine complexity on one hand with customers’ needs for ease of maintenance and lower prices on another, Solid Edge is a comprehensive, highly effective solution.

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Angelus Sanitary Can Machine Company

Challenges:

• Highly complex machines must work flawlessly
• Complex machines must be easy to maintain
• Customers demand faster machines and affordability

Keys To Success:

• Replace outdated 2D CAD system with 3D system
• Find leading product from stable vendor
• Select CAD with built-in data management, best sheet metal design and technical support

Results:

• Selected Solid Edge from Siemens PLM Software
• Better visualization of complex machine assemblies
• Less rework is saving money
• Process-specific sheet metal design saves design time
• Reduced design time saves customers money

Industry:

• Machinery & Industrial

Client's Primary Business:

Manufacturer of machinery used around the world for closing beverage, food and non-food cans.

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Business Initiatives:

• Knowledge & IP Management
• Production Efficiency
• Value Chain Synchronization

Solutions/Services:

• NX
• NX Design (CAD)
• Solid Edge

Client Location:

Los Angeles, California
United States

"When it comes to costs, Solid Edge helps us hold them down because we require fewer design iterations now. We don't have to keep on redesigning and redesigning."

Luisito Chong

Production Engineering Manager

Angelus Sanitary Can Machine Company