Pressure/Counterpressure levels?

[BrewerMel]

Hey all,

Seems we've been getting quite a few exploding bottles in our Cimec 6 head machine. Was wondering if the levels might be a bit high? Today will be my first time running it as I've been in a week...fun. Seems they've been blowing about 6-10 bottles per pallet.

Could this be a pressure/counterpressure issue? My thought was that everything is just a bit high and might be causing the problem.

Could it have anything to do with bottle quality? The last time I ran bottles with my last brewery we did have a few more explosions than we were used to...

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!
Mel

[BrewinLou]

Where in the process do the bottles explode, during the fill, during the crown, the labeler, or after?

[BrewerMel]

It's happening during filling...the assistant brewer thinks it might be when the CO2 is purging the bottle.

Thanks for your response!

Mel

[BrewinLou]

I have not worked on that particular line, but if you think it is during the purge there are a couple things you could look at. First examin the broken bottles and see if they look unusually thin. You could splice a pressure gauge in the CO2 line and see what the purge pressure goes up to, or just replace the regulator controling the purge alltogether and see if there is a difference. If not any of those you may want to look at how much pressure the fill head is putting down on the bottles and or if the fill head is lining up properly with the bottles. Is the same fill head busting the bottles every time or is it a different one?