Cartridge Heaters For Heat Seal Packaging EquipmentA manufacturer of heat-seal packaging equipment was having problems with consistent, repeatable temperature uniformity on their sealing bars. This resulted in poor seal quality and affected customer satisfaction with the equipment.The manufacture contacted Durex to aid in finding a solution to the problem. Our engineers performed a radiographic examination of the competitive cartridge heaters, as well as dissected them to determine possible reasons for the lack of uniformity. Although the long cartridge heaters used in the seal bar had distributed wattage (to attempt to minimize cold ends on the seal bar), the wattage distribution was not matched to the profile of the seal bar. Therefore, there were areas on the bar, which were too cool. When the temperature of the seal bar was increased, the other areas of the bar became too hot. Durex developed a custom "multi-step" cartridge heater with a distributed wattage profile in which the proper wattage distribution was "tuned" to the seal bar, thus eliminating the uneven heating that was causing the sealing problems. Switching to the Durex cartridge heaters eliminated the seal quality issues and greatly increased the manufacture’s satisfaction with the packaging equipment.
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