Honey Filling DANA® api MATIC 1000

01 · IT DOSES, IT DOES NOT WEIGH

The question we get most

The machine does not weigh the jar: the pump turns just enough to deliver the amount you programmed. Calibrating it means teaching it how much comes out in that turn — you fill once, weigh on a separate scale and correct the figure on the display.

If the density or the temperature of the honey changes, the dose moves with it: check the weight at the start of every run. Each of the 20 programmes keeps its own format and calibration, so going from the 500 g jar back to the 1 kg one is a matter of pressing a number.

02 · RUNNY AND CREAMED

Yes, it fills creamed honey

This is the other question that keeps coming up, and the answer is yes: the gear pump gives a laminar flow, without whipping or aerating, and it is one of the pump types suited to creamed honey. Speed adjusts from 10 to 100 % to follow the product.

What decides is not whether the honey is creamed, it is the crystal size. A well-made cream has a fine crystal and goes through without trouble; a coarsely crystallised honey, or one with wax left in it, is not for a gear pump: it has to be liquefied and filtered first.

A word from the trade: creamed honey is filled cold, around 14 °C, and at that point it is thick. Warming it up to make it flow is the temptation, but above roughly 28 °C the crystals dissolve and you lose the texture that took two weeks to build. Slow the pump down and recalibrate; do not raise the temperature.

03 · TEMPERATURE

50 °C is the ceiling

The Swienty manual puts it plainly: never above 50 °C, because the pump head wears. There is a stainless gear set for hot filling that raises that ceiling; ask us with your specific product in hand.

With honey the question almost answers itself: there is no point bottling above roughly 40 °C, because heat drives up HMF — and at that temperature the machine has room to spare.

04 · THE PUMP HEAD

Prime it, stop the drip, take it apart

A gear pump will not draw dry: before starting you fill the pump head with honey right up to the rim, and the tank or hopper sits level with it or higher. If they sit lower, honey drains back and air gets in — that is what the counterflow valve in the box is for. And air is silent: because the pump measures volume, a bubble comes out as a short-filled jar.

Two things work against dripping: the pump reverses for an instant at the end of each dose and draws back the thread that would otherwise hang, and the rubber nozzle closes the way. That reversal is adjustable — too little and it drips, too much and it swallows air — and the setting is stored.

Everything that touches the honey comes apart without tools: two hand nuts and the head lifts off with the gears in plain sight, dishwasher safe. The other rule is to never run it dry: with no product to lubricate it, it heats up and takes the gears and shaft seals with it.

05 · WHAT IS IN THE BOX

Pedal included; hopper and stand are separate

It arrives ready to work, foot pedal included: hose, bent fitting, clamp, counterflow valve, dosing syringe, legs, cut-off cross and a spare-parts set.

Sold separately: the hopper, 10 or 20 litre, the stand, table or floor, and the optical sensor, which spots the jar and triggers the fill on its own. Note: the hopper needs the table stand or the whole thing tips over.

06 · BEFORE YOU BUY

This is the machine with its pedal and fittings: