Hassia Verpackungsmaschinen of Germany said its Polyflex 8/48 processes polypropylene, as a single-layer or multilayer film depending on the product.
The machine uses pre-heating and a deep-drawing technique tailored to produce and fill cups, bowls and other containers in a variety of shapes and sizes.
The cups are led to the filling station at a rate of about 25 per minute. Dosing assemblies are designed to fill the containers with precise volumes of liquid, paste-like, granulated or lumpy material.
The machine's sealing devices prevent uncontrolled overflows of liquid or granular material, the company claims.
In the next processing step, a covering film is drawn from the roll and guided to the next cup in line. The quality of packaging material, coordinated with sealing temperature, pressure and time provide a hermetic seal and easy opening of the cups.
The cups are adorned with sleeves. The film, which is imprinted and wrapped in a tube shape, is drawn from the roll by an applicator and cut off in a repeating pattern.
The film tube, which at this stage is now spread open, is passed on to a piece of transfer equipment that positions the tube opening below the cup path.
The machine uses a lifting movement to place the sleeves around the cups. A paint applied to the inner side of the film is activated by the residual heat of the cup, allowing it to be positioning on the cup during the transport of the film.
In the next work cycle, the sleeve is fixed with jets of hot air before the line of cups reaches a chamber. The chamber is pressurised with superheated steam to perform the actual shrinking.
After passing through a cooling device, individual packages are punched out from the line of cups. This is done on a belt using suction devices.
"When identical packaging materials are used for cups, cover films and sleeves, the use of the Polyflex 8/48 system is expected to result in savings of up to 35 per cent in material costs," the company claimed in a press release.