Induction Sealing
A Tunnel Induction Sealing Head lets you seal caps where the foil sits a distance greater than say 4 mm from the top surface of the cap; This is often the case with twist top spouts, flip top lids, sports drink caps, sipper caps or shaker caps.
Induction sealing is a process where a coil in the shape of an elongated loop is used to generate a fast oscillating high magnetic field. This magnetic field can change poles as many as 100,000 times every second.
The magnetic field can travel through air and plastic. When the magnetic field meets a metal surface, the magnetic field “induces” a high oscillating current in that metal surface in a plane that is parallel to the coils that generated the magnetic field.
A magnetic field generated from a “point” dissipates with the cube of its distance from that point.
In general, the magnetic field of an induction sealing machine needs to be within 5mm or ¼ inch from the sealing foil to obtain meaningful production speeds.
There are a large range of caps that do not fit the standard flat top profile and present a problem to bring the magnetic field of the heat sealing equipment to within 5mm or ¼ inch from the sealing foil.
These specialty caps need an adaption from a standard flat coil sealing head to a tunnel sealing head. The Coils are shaped to pass around the tunnel. The tunnel allows the protruding feature of the specialty caps to pass through the machine without lifting the plane of the magnetic field further away from the sealing foil within the bottle cap.
On the SealerOn website there is a youtube icon that will link you to videos showing SealerOn™ heat sealing or more accurately induction heat sealing using a tunnel sealing head.
The SealerOn™500 fitted with a sealing tunnel is capable of sealing at sealing speed up to 10 Meters per Minutes or 30 Feet per Minute depending on the cap and foil combination.
For faster induction sealing there is the MeRo adjustable tunnel sealing machines. These machines have the added and unique feature of having an adjustable width sealing head. Having an adjustable width enables higher concentrating and focussing of the induction field allowing for higher speed sealing. A MeRo 2Kw unit is capable of sealing at sealing speed up to 30 Meters per Minutes or 90 Feet per Minute depending on the cap and foil combination.
Efficient cap sealing means that less time is needed under the sealing head and hence higher production speed is possible.
A Flat profile sealing head will allow for a greater range of cap sizes and even allows for that Sealing head to be placed at an angle across the product’s path to achieve sealing of cap diameters that are even wider than the coil winding pattern within the sealing head. It is quite possible to have a Flat profile sealing head that can seal caps from 30mm to 110mm wide. The trade-off for the versatility of this profile sealing head on a heat sealing head is lower speed throughput and an inability to seal specialty caps.