A few years ago all sugar went out in barrels or bags, while today a modern refinery turns out about twenty different styles of container, and twenty-four kinds of sugar. It is obvious, therefore, that the packing room of a refinery is an interesting place, covering as it does a large area and including a great amount of special, intricate machinery for filling, weighing and sewing or sealing packages.
In the bottom of the bins into which the sugar is delivered from the separators is a series of galvanized iron pipes, through which the sugar runs to the various filling devices, the latter being usually arranged in long rows. Under the end of each pipe is an automatic weighing machine. In packing bags, a workman hangs a bag on the weighing machine and presses a lever, thus allowing the sugar to run into the bag. As soon as the exact amount required is reached, the flow is automatically cut off. These weighing machines are so accurate that they gauge the amount to within a fraction of an ounce. The operative removes the full bag, places it on a conveyor that runs in and level with the floor and quickly adjusts an empty one on the weighing machine. These men become so expert that a single operative will fill two hundred and fifty one-hundred-pound bags per hour. The weighing machines are designed to fill and weigh four hundred and eighty one-hundred-pound bags per hour, but the operative cannot handle them at this rate.
FILLING, WEIGHING AND SEWING 100-POUND SACKS
FILLING, WEIGHING AND SEWING 25-POUND SACKS
Four sewing machines, specially designed for sewing the filled bags, are located immediately over the conveyor and in direct line with it. As the bag passes along on the conveyor, the operative at the first machine picks up the end of the inner cotton sack and passes it through his machine, stitching it securely. The bag then passes along to the third machine, where the operative takes hold of the outer burlap bag and sews it in the same manner. Each operative has a spare machine ready for instant use in case the one he is running gets out of order. Continuing its journey to the end of the conveyor, the bag is deposited on the main belt conveyor, which takes it without manual aid to the shipping floor or the storage warehouse. A sewing-machine operative will sew as many as seventeen bags per minute, but it is trying work and the men relieve each other at intervals during the day. Both the one-hundred- and the forty-eight-pound sacks are handled in this manner. Formerly the half sacks weighed fifty pounds, but since the Parcel Post law went into effect they have been changed to forty-eight pounds to permit of their shipment by mail. Those containing twenty-five, ten, five and two pounds are weighed and sewed in much the same way, by the aid of specially designed, rapid-handling machinery. The small package machines will accurately weigh and fill five-pound bags at the rate of twenty-five packages per minute, the others in proportion.
The paper boxes, or cartons as they are called, are weighed and filled by special machinery. This machinery seems to possess an intelligence almost human. One girl feeds the cartons (the tops and bottoms of which are open) into the machine at the rate of thirty-two per minute. The machine glues the bottom, weighs the sugar to within one thirty-second of an ounce, fills the carton, glues the top, seals it and passes it on to a conveyor which delivers the finished package to a table, from which it is packed into a box for shipment. Women are usually employed in putting up the lighter packages.
A short distance from the bag-weighing machines, and running parallel with them, is a line of pipes or spouts for filling barrels. On the floor under each spout is a barrel shaker. This is a heavy cast-iron plate that is lifted about one inch, first on one side, then on the other, by the action of two cams or arms attached to a revolving shaft underneath. The shaker drops back violently on the supporting frame after each lift, causing the sugar to settle compactly in the barrel as it is filled to an average weight of three hundred and fifty pounds. Naturally, the greater the amount of sugar packed in a barrel, the less the container costs per unit of output, and as the average cost of a sugar barrel in the United States is fifty cents, the container cost per one hundred pounds of sugar is 14.3 cents.