Twelve? Fifteen? Twenty-one!
When others have to pass it is far from over at HEUFT: the customers of the systems engineers can fully rely on the availability of spare parts for twelve years! But often much more is possible. The best example: the HEUFT SPECTRUM M BFS which was discontinued a long time ago. All the important components of the time-honoured empty bottle inspector are still available even more than 21 years after its assembly and commissioning – and quickly installed like a current service visit to J.M. Gabler-Saliter Milchwerk GmbH & Co. KG in the Allgäu showed.
Durability, reliability and a guaranteed future: that is something that simply anyone investing in devices and machines for their filling line wants! Therefore HEUFT is fully committed to real sustainability. The leading manufacturer's modular checking and inspection systems have been designed for a particularly long life cycle from the very beginning. This already starts with the development of the hardware and software and continues with a solid construction, careful assembly and commissioning as well as a powerful remote and on-site service.
What this means in practice could recently be experienced at Gabler-Saliter. An empty bottle inspector which was built, installed and commissioned 21 years ago is still running along a line for filling coffee cream in Obergünzburg – and is still achieving the necessary inspection performance during the base, sidewall and finish inspection.
Accordingly divisional manager Gernot Schuster is still satisfied with the device which in the meantime is now getting on in years. "We value our existing machines," he confesses. Especially when these can "always be brought up to date" due to the long-term availability of spare parts and retrofitting. And this is indeed the case with the HEUFT SPECTRUM M BFS which has been monitoring the quality and integrity of the empty bottles at Gabler-Saliter since 1997. All the important spare parts are still available – for example the base strobe which ensures the correct, homogeneous illumination during the in-line identification of foreign objects and glass defects at the bottom of the coffee cream bottles.
Long-term availability and long-term operational reliability
Jochen Krause recently replaced it in order to ensure the proven detection performance of the device in the future too. The local HEUFT service technician did not have to travel far to do this: "I only live 30 kilometres away from here." And he is very familiar with the empty bottle inspector which has not been available for a long time. "I helped to build it when I started working for HEUFT in Burgbrohl," he recalls.
Accordingly the work at Gabler-Saliter was easy for him: the box marked "Original HEUFT replacement goods" was quickly brought in and unpacked. Mr Krause then opened the lower door of the empty bottle inspector, folded back the holder, unscrewed and removed the old base strobe in a few skilful steps.
Shortly afterwards the new one is already installed and professionally fixed in position. The inspection of the coffee cream bottles before the filling process could be resumed after a short test to check that the illumination for an accurate base inspection is functioning properly as requested and all the settings are correct.
This is how quickly the full operational and detection reliability of the time-honoured device was restored – due to a long-term availability of spare parts of at least twelve to well over 20 years!