White Papers

Strictly speaking, shrink wrapping is not considered “flexible packaging.” However, wrapping does use flexible film and foil of various materials and combinations. Many of the general considerations for films discussed in previous whitepapers on Form-Fill-Seal and pouching machines will apply to wrapping machines as well.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link and a packaging line is only as fast as its slowest machine. The slowest machine is the constraint that determines the potential output of the line.

Buffers can be used to manage this constraint to improve total throughput. The terms buffer and accumulator are often used interchangeably. They are actually two similar but different things.

In previous papers I discussed liquid filling. This month I’ll talk about dry, or solids, filling. There are many types of dry products ranging from fine powders like talc or flour, to irregular pieces like frozen chicken parts. Other types of dry products include pharmaceutical powders, regular shaped products like nuts and bolts, candies and pharmaceutical tablets.

Last month I discussed cosmetic or level style fillers. These fill a container to a certain level and fill volume is determined by the volume of the container. This is fine for many products, but others need more precise volume control. Volumetric fillers provide precise fills independently of the container. They do this by measuring physical volume, as in a piston filler. Other architectures measure the product by weight, mass or flow.

There are several dozen styles of liquid filler available from over 100 US manufacturers. All have advantages and disadvantages and the range of choice may be overwhelming to the buyer who wants to know what kind of filler is “best”. This whitepaper will discuss the class of filler commonly called “overflow” fillers. Subsequent whitepapers will discuss other filling architectures.

Timing screws, often just called screws, worms or helices, have applications in virtually every operation that can occur on a packaging line. Metering containers into a starwheel on a capper or other machine is one of the most common. It is certainly not the only application for this versatile device. This article will discuss the different types and applications of screws as well as design concepts and troubleshooting.

All packaging operations are important but capping is one of the most critical. An improperly capped bottle can leak product out or damage product by leaking air in. This paper will focus on continuous thread (CT) screw caps. It will walk you through some of the issues that arise and how to prevent or resolve them.