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Heat Seal Parameters of Flexible Polymer Film and Finished Package Seal Integrity - Quality Control inspection issues
Posted on 15/10/2013
by Phil Neal
For many products, the impact of packaging on shelf life and product safety is critical to success. Packaging technical teams will carefully specify packaging material characteristics in terms of functional and barrier properties, for example Oxygen Transmission Rate for an oxygen sensitive product. Despite this, the highest risk to pack integrity and shelf life can be failures in the pack heat seals or closures.
Heat Seal parameters are easily measured; Heat Sealability = Temperature + Pressure + Time. Yet maintaining optimum heat sealing conditions in production and recognising the true cause of poor sealing remains a challenge. Learn More...
New online seal inspection technology instantly rejects compromised seals.
Posted on 21/12/2012
by Phil Neal
A new online seal inspection technology promises to revolutionise quality assurance for many packagers, especially food, beverage, and healthcare producers that rely on seal integrity for product containment, quality and shelf life. Seal -Scope™ and Seal-Cam™ inspection systems integrate into most existing packaging machines, without any modification. Each generates a unique ‘seal fingerprint’ for every package which, in a few milliseconds, is compared to statistical data to determine pass or fail. Failed seals trigger a signal to an ejector unit.
The technology, which has been developed by a team of researchers at The University of Leuven, Belgium, is based around a highly advanced statistical algorithm that not only determines pass/fail, it also monitors trends in seal process capability enabling early warnings when pre-set limits are reached. The system is capable of detecting incomplete seals, wrinkles, folds, creases, holes, and product or contaminates in the seal. The sensitivity can be set based on the application and the user’s quality requirements. Learn More...