Machine remplissage lotion

Our standard lotion filling machines handle viscosities up to 100,000 cP using a single piston pump per fill head. For ultra-thick body butters, heel creams and intensive hair masks (100,000–200,000 cP), a high-pressure piston pump configuration with heated product pathways is used to keep product flowing. For products above 200,000 cP (stiff creams, thick ointments), the fill machine is converted to our cream filling configuration with twin-screw or progressive-cavity pump technology. Viscosity should be measured at the intended filling temperature — many thick lotions have significantly lower viscosity at 30–35°C than at room temperature.

Yes, with nozzle changeover. Pump dispenser bottles (pump top not yet inserted during filling) use a dive nozzle that descends into the open bottle neck and fills from bottom up, preventing splashing. Wide-mouth jars use a fixed-position fill nozzle above the jar opening — because the wide opening prevents the nozzle from submerging, fill speed is reduced to prevent surface disturbance. Airless pump bottles (where product is loaded through the bottom or through the dip tube) require a specialized bottom-fill or dip-tube-fill nozzle. Each container type has a stored recipe that configures nozzle type, fill speed, and fill target weight.

Fill accuracy for lotion filling machines is maintained through a combination of net-weight measurement and piston pump calibration. The load cell under each container measures fill weight in real time and closes the piston pump valve when the target weight is reached — compensating for viscosity-driven flow rate variations between batches. Piston pump calibration is performed at the start of each production run by filling 5–10 test containers and comparing actual fill weight to target; piston stroke length is adjusted until the mean error is below 0.1%. For multi-head machines, each fill head is independently calibrated to ±0.1% accuracy.

Lotion filling machines require more intensive cleaning than liquid soap or shampoo machines because oil-based emulsions leave oily residues on product contact surfaces. Our recommended cleaning protocol for lotion lines: (1) Hot water flush (60°C, 5 minutes) to liquefy and remove bulk product residue; (2) Alkaline CIP with food-grade degreaser (65–70°C, 10 minutes) to saponify oil residues on stainless steel surfaces; (3) Hot water rinse (60°C, 5 minutes) to remove degreaser residues; (4) Final sanitizer rinse. For color-pigmented lotions (tinted moisturizers, BB creams), an additional solvent-based flush step with isopropanol (70%) may be required before the alkaline CIP to remove color pigment deposits.