Leak Tester Controls

Most information is presented on the graphical touchscreen control panel. The information is organised into several pages. Other pages can be stepped through by pressing the PAGE button. The pages specific to leak detector operation are explained in this section; other pages may be available depending on the options installed. These are discussed in the relevant sections of the manual.

This is the main page displayed during normal running. The system will always show this page after power-on. This page displays the following information:

The system provides various counters of various items (see below). A count can be reset to zero as follows:

Touch the count value. It should become highlighted. Then, press the “R” (Reset) button.

These are counts of the number of bottles that have passed and failed the test.

A pressure scale is displayed, in bar graph form, for each channel. This give a quick visual indication of the actual pressure in the bottle at any instant in time. The display is scaled to the set test pressure, so that full scale always equals the set test pressure.

Immediately to the right of each bargraph is an indicator light which turns on when a bottle fails the test.

To the right of the indicator light, for each channel, is displayed a number representing the precise result of the leak test. The number displayed is the percentage of the initial pressure which has been lost during the test. This number is compared against the set limit to determine pass or fail.

This shows the throughput of the leak tester in Bottles Per Minute. This is updated every cycle. The value is accurate as of the start of last cycle, and calculated from the interval between the last two cycles.

This is the page used to alter the leak tester settings. There are two types of setting; numerical and on/off. The value of a numerical setting is indicated by the number displayed. An on/off setting value (i.e. whether it is on or off) is indicated by an indicator box. To alter a setting, proceed as follows:

Touch the displayed setting value. The value should become highlighted.

Press the “OK” button to retain the new value.

This is used to control the length of the leak test. The higher this setting, the more accurate the leak test. This should be set to as high a value as possible, consistent with bottle throughput.

This sets the maximum time for which the leak tester will attempt to pressurize a bottle under test. 1 second is normally sufficient. This can be reduced to reduce overall cycle time if required. If it is reduced too far, the machine will not have enough time to pressurize the bottles and they will be rejected.

This sets the sensitivity of the test. The percentage of pressure decay measured by the test is compared with this value to determine the test result. If the decay is greater than this value, the bottle is rejected.

This is the target pressure used to inflate the bottle. A value of 20mB is typical. Higher values can give marginally more accurate results but may distort the bottle during the test.

The test cycle is started when a stationary bottle is detected at test station. The time for which the bottle must be stationary can be adjusted using this setting. A higher value prevents false starts due to a very slow conveyor, and allows time for the bottles to stabilize before the heads are brought down.

This sets the length of the pulse of air which is used to reject the bottles. This can be adjusted to provide accurate control of the force required.

This can be used to introduce a short delay between the bottle being detected by the reject station photoswitch, and the bottle being rejected. This allows the bottle to become precisely aligned with the reject blower before the start of rejection. This improves the directionality of the rejected bottle.