Packaging machinery




Choosing packaging machinery includes an assessment of technical capabilities, labor requirements, worker safety, maintainability, serviceability, reliability, ability to integrate into the packaging line, capital cost, floorspace, flexibility (change-over, materials, multiple products, etc.), energy requirements, quality of outgoing packages, qualifications (for food, pharmaceuticals, etc.), throughput, efficiency, productivity, ergonomics, return on investment, etc.

Packaging machinery can be:

  1. purchased as standard, off-the-shelf equipment
  2. purchased custom-made or custom-tailored to specific operations
  3. manufactured or modified by in-house engineers and maintenance staff

Efforts at packaging line automation increasingly use programmable logic controllers and robotics.

Packaging machines may be of the following general types:

  • Accumulating and collating machines
  • Blister packs, skin packs and vacuum packaging machines
  • Bottle caps equipment, over-capping, lidding, closing, seaming and sealing machines
  • Box, case, tray, and carrier forming, packing, unpacking, closing, and sealing machines
  • Cartoning machines
  • Cleaning, sterilizing, cooling and drying machines
  • Coding, printing, marking, stamping, and imprinting machines
  • Converting machines
  • Conveyor belts, accumulating and related machines
  • Feeding, orienting, placing and related machines
  • Filling machines: handling dry, powdered, solid, liquid, gas, or viscous products
  • Inspecting: visual, sound, metal detecting, etc.
  • Label dispenser
  • Orienting, unscrambling machines
  • Package filling and closing machines
  • Palletizing, depalletizing, unit load assembly
  • Product identification: labeling, marking, etc.
  • Sealing machines: heat sealer or glue units
  • Slitting machines
  • Weighing machines: check weigher, multihead weigher
  • Wrapping machines: stretch wrapping, shrink wrap, banding
  • Form, fill and seal machines
  • Other specialty machinery: slitters, perforating, laser cutters, parts attachment, etc.

  • Bakery goods shrinkwrapped by shrink film, heat sealer and heat tunnel on roller conveyor

  • High speed conveyor with stationary bar code scanner for sorting

  • Label printer applicator applying a label to adjacent panels of a corrugated box.

  • Robots used to palletize bread

  • Automatic stretch wrapping machine

  • Equipment used for making molded pulp components and molding packaging from straw

  • A semi-automatic rotary arm stretch wrapper

  • Equipment for thermoforming packages at NASA

  • Automated labeling line for wine bottles

  • Shrink film wrap being applied on PET bottles

  • Pharmaceutical packaging line

  • Filling machinery for bag-in-box

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