Low-cost Packaging Machines

1999.  I was contacted by Barsleaks, a small New Zealand company, operating in Australia and asked if I could help them create low-cost packaging machines to assist their production.  One of Barsleaks products is an organic compound designed to be put into an engine's coolant in an emergency to seal leaks.  Bars Leaks operated from a small factory at Caringbah in the South of Sydney.  The filling of the Bars Leaks bottles was, at that time, done by hand.  They asked me to design and build a low-cost, pellet measuring machine and a machine that would screw on plastic bottle caps; the emphasis being low-cost.  The low-cost pellet machine consisted of a sliding drawer of Ultra-high-molecular Weight Polyethylene driven by a pneumatic ram.  Later it was found that the machine, because of its precision was saving them around a cubic metre of mix every three months.  The capping machine was created using a cheap vertical drill driving a roller-skate wheel, fashioned on a lathe, to grip the caps.