Watson-Marlow Enhances Its Aseptic Filling And Capping Machine Range Through Acquisition Of Flexicon A/S

Watson-Marlow, well known in the biopharmaceutical industry for its expansive range of production-duty peristaltic metering and transfer pumps, now greatly expands its capabilities in filling applications. Flexicon has been marketing peristaltic-based aseptic filling and capping equipment for the past 22 years, specializing in filling systems for clinical-trial production. The company's product portfolio ranges from stand-alone units for hand filling to fully automatic filling, stoppering and capping machines. The fully automatic systems are customized to fit any container, be it a vial, bottle, test tube or non-self-standing micro-tube. Utilizing peristaltic pump and tubing technology, Flexicon filling systems provide a completely disposable flow path, enhancing productivity and traceability while reducing maintenance as compared to piston type or time/pressure fillers.

About Watson-Marlow

Watson-Marlow is the world's largest manufacturer of peristaltic tube pumps for biopharmaceutical, pharmaceutical and process applications with the widest range of pumps, pumpheads and tubing available for end-users and OEMs. As the pumped fluid does not come into contact with the pump itself - only with the tube – Watson-Marlow pumps are particularly adapted to pharmaceutical and biotechnology processes, where sterility and a high degree of precision are paramount.

Some of the medical products Kuntz has developed automated systems for are:

• Nebulizers - Electro-Surgical Pencils - Pipette Racking and Assembly
• Contraceptive and Vaginal Devices - Blood Oxygenators - Kidney Dialysis Products
• Heart Lumens - Filters - Membranes
• Intraoccular Lenses (hard and soft) - Contact Lenses - Cuvettes - Pumps - Valves
• Bottle Capping and Torquing - Vacutainer Tubes - Foams - Bedding
• Scalpels - Plastic Sleeve Trimming - Urological Components
• Tubing Sets and Coils - Breathing Circuit Tubes - Sutures - Catheters
• Heart Valves - Micro Centrifuge Tubes - Needle and Syringe Components
• Autopheresis Products - Eye Drop Spray Dispensers - Pipette Tips - Tracheotomy Tubes
• Aortic Punches - Multiple Lumens - Injection Sites - I.V. Bag Spikes - Biopsy Needles
• Tracheotomy Speech Valves - Blood Collection Needles - "T" Tubes (Drainage)
• Plasma Separators - Injection Parts - Catheters
• Catheters for Cranial Aneurysms - Cryosurgery Products and Processes - Guidewires
• Balloon Catheters - Electrodes - Infusion Pumps - Transdermal Patches - I.V. Metering Cassettes
  

Cubitainer boxes, transported directly from an upstream Pearson box erecting machine, enter the Farason system via a Hytrol conveyor.

Farason received the Pearson from the system integrator, Filamatic, Baltimore, MD, for integration to the Farason supplied box conveyors and use for testing and debugging the Farason system. Prior to the Hytrol roller conveyor, there is a straight section of fl at belt conveyor where the customer will manually place the flexible plastic bottles with the necks uniformly oriented.

Cubitainers enter the system and are positioned by an alignment device to establish a reference point and square the container. Both axes are horizontal and programmable to provide handling flexibility for five box sizes.

Leading and trailing box flaps are closed during the positioning move by means of a static rail for the leading flap and manipulation of the back flap by the alignment tool.

A second 2-axis device, horizontal and vertical, equipped with a neck locator is directed at the cubitainer flexible plastic bottle neck opening. The device is equipped with an end effector tool consisting of an inflatable bladder. With the bladder defl ated, the tool is inserted into the neck opening to a predetermined level. The bladder is inflated and the tool moves upward, drawing the neck out of the bottle. The bottle is prevented from moving upward with the neck by the leading and trailing box flaps secured by the Farason tooling.

Once the neck has been withdrawn from the bottle, and with the box flaps controlled, the cubitainer is moved forward via both 2-axis devices moving in concert, and the bottle neck is inserted into the Filamatic neck locator and transport device for transfer to subsequent downstream filling and capping operations.

Features

• 32-bit/33MHz bus master PCI bus interface board
• Flow-Thru architecture featuring a Scatter/Gather DMA engine that supports the direct transfer of data to VGA or system memory in real-time with no latency or CPU usage
• Acquires image sizes up to 512K by 32K pixels (vertical size is unlimited for line scan cameras)
• LVDS/RS422 (32-bit) area or line scan camera interface supporting a single camera with up to 4 8-bit channels, two synchronized cameras or two multiplexed asynchronous cameras (model dependent)
• 9 user-programmable I/O signals (4 inputs and 5 outputs)
• Multiple trigger modes
• Up to 40MHz acquisition for LVDS and 30MHz for RS-422 (contact us for higher clock rates)
• On-the-fly reformatting for multi-tap cameras
• Standard 8-bit in/12-bit out LUT
• Optional 16-bit in/16-bit out LUT available
• Cables and configuration files for more than 200 industrial cameras
• Drivers and DLLs for Windows NT, 2000 and XP
• Supported by all versions of the BitFlow SDK

Applications

The flexibility of the Road Runner product allows it to be used in virtually any imaging application that requires a digital camera or data source and utilizes the power, scalability and cost-effectiveness of the desktop computer for processing. The Road Runner can also be programmed to DMA directly to other PCI devices such as an embedded processor or high-speed storage peripheral.

Support for the NorPix StreamPix Digital Video Recording Solutions

BitFlow is pleased to announce that the NorPix StreamPix digital video recording software products now work with their newest digital and analog frame grabbers. It is now possible to easily build system level solutions for high speed and/or multi-camera streaming video applications by simply combining nearly any industrial camera(s), the appropriate BitFlow frame grabber, and one of NorPix's StreamPix software video recording packages.

OEM's, End Users, and Integrators alike can capture color or monochrome digital video from up to four Camera Link or analog cameras per frame grabber, and send the video in real time to PC RAM � up to 128 Gigabytes of RAM has been tested to date - or to a hard disk drives at up to 1,700 Megabytes (1.7 Gigabytes) per second.

BitFlow's newest frame grabbers, the Karbon-CL, Neon-CL, and Alta-AN plug into the very fast PCI Express bus. They were designed to keep up with the fastest high speed cameras available, and to be used in any number of applications where capturing high speed streaming video is required.

NorPix's StreamPix digital video recording software products let anyone easily create movie clips in AVI or other file formats such as bmp, tiff, multi-tiff, mpeg or jpeg format � compressed and uncompressed real time video formats - without dropping frames. The hardware and software can be installed in any off the shelf PC, and nearly any hard drive will work; no raid or SCSI technology is required.

Vision systems can be built with multiple BitFlow Karbon-CL frame grabbers for those who need more than four Base Camera Link cameras, or more than two Medium, Full or �10-tap� Camera Link cameras. For those wishing to use multiple analog cameras, an analog multiple camera vision system based on the BitFlow Alta-AN frame grabber family can be created. For example, Alta-AN4 can capture from up to 12 RS170 or monochrome progressive scan cameras, or up to four RGB 3-chip cameras. Multiple Alta-ANs can be used for applications requiring still more analog cameras.

Contact BitFlow or NorPix for details.

About BitFlow, Inc.

BitFlow has been developing reliable, high-performance Frame Grabbers for use in imaging applications for the past 15 years. With thousands of boards installed throughout the world, into hundreds of imaging applications, BitFlow is dedicated to using this knowledge and experience to provide customers with the best possible image acquisition and application development solution.

About NorPix, Inc.

NorPix is a leading developer of digital video recording software for acquiring live video directly to hard disk or RAM. User applications of NorPix products include motion analysis, image archiving, flow analysis, medical imaging and web inspection.

Development libraries provide hardware access and display functions. Working example applications, complete with MS Visual C++ source code, enable developers to quickly demonstrate BitFlow's products and subsequently integrate them into their applications. The SDK supports the robust multitasking and multiprocessing performance benefits of Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/VIsta. The Common Camera Interface Library (Ci) allows for seamless integration with all of BitFlow's products. In addition, the high level Buffer management library (BufIn) makes the task of writing an asynchronous, multiple host buffer application trivial.

There are two version of the SDK, the full version and the drivers only version. For more information see the Drivers Only link.

Features

• Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista drivers and DLLs
• Asynchronous, interrupt-driven, multitasking, multi-threaded operation
• C/C++ 32-bit interface for 32-bit version of Windows
• C/C++ 64-bit interface for 64-bit version of Windows
• Acquisition event (e.g. end of frame, end of DMA, loss of sync) notification via a non-polling interrupt signals
• High-level API supports complete setup and acquisition with less than 10 function calls; Low level API supports total control of the camera interface and includes sophisticated line rate and exposure time control
• Very low latency DMA reset code, allows for tight spacing of continuous variable-size imaging targets
• Complete API error tracking system, with all error message destinations under full program control
• Support for building DMA chains of host buffers that are automatically filled during acquisition
• Full observability of the board's current state: line number, maximum line number (for variable size images), acquisition state, trigger status, etc.
• Camera configuration and test utilities
• Example applications with source code for viewing, processing, buffer management and sequence acquisition
• Extensive built-in diagnostics to assist during support incidents

Example Applications

• BiFlow - Sequence capture application using our new BufIn API
• Circ - Circular buffer management application
• BayView - Bayer Filter Color viewing application
• R2/Rv/R2CL/R64/Ci/BiSimple - console based applications
• CiView - Real-time display application*
• BiProces - Real-time processing application
• SysReg - System configuration utility*
• CamVert - Camera configuration file editor
• CamEd - Interactive Camera configuration file editor*
• CiBench - tests PCI DMA throughput capabilities of the host computer*
• BFCom - HyperTerminal-like application allowing direct access to a Camera Link camera through the board's serial port * Indicates applications included in driver-only installations. The remaining applications are available through the one-time purchase of our SDK.

API Layers The BitFlow API is broken into tiers. User application can access any tier, higher levels offer more functionality with fewer calls, lower levels offer custom control of the board. Click here for more information.

• Buffer Interface (BufIn): Supports high-level buffer management.(more info)
• Camera Interface level (Ci): Gives applications a common view of the Karbon, R64, R3, Raven and Road Runner and therefore access to all of the supported analog, digital and Camera Link cameras. Allows the user to control multiple R64, R3, Raven and/or Road Runner boards simultaneously.
• High-level interface: Provides the simplest way to initialize the Karbon, R64, R3, Raven or road Runner and acquire and/or display images. It's the quickest way to verify operation of the interface with a particular camera.
• Middle-level interface: Gives the user more efficient and customized control. Provides real-time access to specialized camera features.
• Low-level interface: Provides the most direct access to board control and status registers and memory. This level fully exposes the boards architecture to the user, something not available in many competing products.

SDK Support

The BitFlow SDK supports Windows NT/2000/Windows XP/2003/Vista on Intel-compatible PC platforms. All BitFlow libraries are native, 32-bit/64-bit implementations directly supported by Microsoft Visual C++ or Visual Studio .NET. However they are are callable from Win32-compliant programming language or application. Contact BitFlow for additional operating systems support. Drivers are available for off-the-shelf image processing packages such as A&B Software's ImageWarp, MVTec's HALCON, Stemmer Imaging's Common Vision Blox, Media Cybernetics' Image Pro PlusTM, National Instrument's LabView and IO Industries' Video Savant. See the 3rd party software page for the latest drivers. Also see the Ci Drivers page for Common Interface Drivers for 3rd party software. In addition, the R2, Rv and R64 layers are broken into separate tiers. Most applications can be written using only the highest level functions. However a mid-level function may be required to make a small tweak to the board setup. The lowest level is basically used for direct access to the memory and registers on the board. Some low level functions are duplicated between the R2 and Rv APIs and the BF API. For example there is a function R2RegPoke and a function BFRegPoke. These functions are equivalent, the R2 version of which is provided as a convenience.