6 replies to this topic

[QLD]

Hi All,

looking into purchasing some equipment for testing seal quality of flow wrapped and heat sealed products.

Have looked at this as a possible....

http://www.techsci.c...d=1&prod_id=131


Anybody out there have any experience with this type of technology ?

thanks

[Foodworker]

I have never used equipment of this type, but I am still a fan of the water bath method despite what this company says.

[QLD]

I am really keen on having an objective method that takes away a certain amount of human error and am really keen to have the system so that it is networked to be able to document results and alert on failures.

We do often find that when we follow up on complaints for poor sealing the paperwork states everything was ok, now whether this a compliance problem on the part of team member or a seal test not returning any bubble I cannot be sure.

[Dr Ajay Shah]

Are you gas flushing your baked products? if so then I suggest that you look at the following machine from Denmark. It is brilliant. It is a leak detection system and it is better than using the water bath method which can be time consuming

Have a look at the following website and contact the company if necassary for any of your other needs:

http://www.pbi-danse... /><br /><br />

Edited by Dr Ajay Shah, 27 February 2011 - 01:59 AM.

[Anish]

Very interesting to look into the details - is there any automation for testing the leaks in Tetrapaks / Combibloc carton packs?.
Its very difficult to cut the packs - physically, put the dye and observe after 30 minutes - Specially during a huge
manfacturer sleeve manufacturing problems!!!!!!!!.

Edited by Anish, 01 March 2011 - 12:04 PM.

[Dr Ajay Shah]

Very interesting to look into the details - is there any automation for testing the leaks in Tetrapaks / Combibloc carton packs?.
Its very difficult to cut the packs - physically, put the dye and observe after 30 minutes - Specially during a huge
manfacturer sleeve manufacturing problems!!!!!!!!.

Hey Anish...Sorry but "Leak detection" only works with gas flushing only!!..It does not work on Tetrapaks or Combibloc cartons.

[GMO]

Yes I have experience with it, quite a lot actually.

Are you checking for CO2? If so, my biggest recommendation is to ask for an IR sensor not a ceramic one. This is because a ceramic sensor (IME) is very easily "confused" by any residual solvents on packaging from the printing process and it takes around half an hour to heat up at the start of the shift so takes a bit of planning. That said if you packaging isn't heavily printed you'll probably be ok with ceramic; just do lots of trial work.

Next of all it's really worth considering your process. If you have a single die on your flow-wrap it's easy to check one or two packs but if you have multiple die sealing machines, you must check (at least) as many consecutive packs as you have dies as there might be an issue with one die.

Also you need to consider how critical it is to your process and what to do in the event of a failure. Leak fails were critical to our process and so it created a lot of rework. Remember depending on your products, CO2 may be absorbed into the foodstuff pretty quickly so retesting might not be an option.

Lastly the in-line machines are getting faster so they might be worth a go if you have the money... but remember they will check 100% of product so your rejects and rework might strangely be lower so in the long run it might be more cost effective.