This Greener Tech Bite reviews machine adjustments and sealing jaw designs that provide the pressure and heat* required for quality seals. You can consult additional, detailed posts and videos on each topic by clicking the red links or the corresponding images.
Quality seals on flow wrappers & vertical baggers require a combination of time, pressure, and heat, if utilized, that seals across varying thicknesses created by the fin or lap seal, gussets, or other pleats and wrinkles. Read more
Are you planning to test or convert to sustainable packaging films on your flow wrappers or vertical form-fill-seal baggers? Your current machine set-up and components may not provide quality results with these paper-based, recyclable, or compostable materials.
This Greener Tech Bite outlines steps in your packaging process that you should evaluate and adjust before running these new films. You’ll find links to resources for:
• Machine Set-Up
• Sealing Jaw & Former Design
• Standard Operating Procedures
• Training
When we work with clients, sample packages provide vital diagnostic clues for troubleshooting problems on flow wrappers or vertical baggers. And even when clients don’t report problems, we use sample packages to help them discover and implement improvements that they may have overlooked—from new knife, sealing jaw, and former designs to machine adjustments that optimize the whole packaging process.
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One of Greener’s Technical Salespeople discovered that knife purchases by their customer had grown by 35% over the past year, at an additional cost of nearly $10,000. It seemed unlikely that additional production had accounted for all of this increase, which indicated to him that the customer could be experiencing problems on their horizontal flow wrappers.
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This Greener Tech Bite, with the help of our partner Kenray Forming, explores six key design and set-up principles to help you identify the source of forming and sealing problems and develop solutions for quality packages. Read more
NeedThere is no one-size-fits-all solution for the design of crimpers and sealing jaws on horizontal flow wrappers and vertical baggers; they should be specified according to the packaging film, products, and conditions of your packaging operation.
This post, the last in our four-part series, reviews design options for crimpers and jaws. The optimal combination of serration patterns, materials, and special features can dramatically improve seal quality and productivity when sealing across extra film layers at the end seal. Read more
Varying thicknesses of film at the end seal can cause sealing problems, especially at the transition point between two and four layers created by the fin seal, gussets, wrinkles and creases, as well at the corners. Applications of pressure and heat (if applicable) must be great enough to cause the sealant layer to flow into and seal off these voids. Excess pressure can easily crush or split the end seal, while overheating distorts the seal and can cause poor hot tack, where the film springs back open, or “moons,” before the seal can set.
The operating window for creating quality seals can be elusive, resulting in packages that leak, are distorted, and have little appeal to consumers.
An important step in troubleshooting these issues is to eliminate unintended wrinkles and creases. This post, the first in a four-part series, will examine this process on horizontal flow wrappers; Part 2 considers these issues on vertical baggers.
