Ultrasonic sealing: special for Italy

Apr 06, 2017

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The newly-opened Tech-Center in Modena is a central part of Herrmann Ultraschall’s strategy of cooperating with the major machine builders and end customers in the North Italian market. The company can look back on 20 years of experience in sealing with ultrasonics. The main focuses of the new product portfolio for 2017 are robust modules, simple integration and a generator with new interfaces.

In order to cater even better to the important Italian market, the company has opened a technology center in Modena in the past year. Here, seminars are held, the technology’s advantages are demonstrated, and initial tests are carried out. This brings the company closer to the customers and facilitates cooperation on the project: the employees in Modena provide support with the initial inquiries, lines of samples, and tool adaptations, up to commissioning of the ultrasonic unit in the packaging machine.

Customer benefits from ultrasonics
«No other sealing process offers the advantages of process monitoring like ultrasonic sealing.
On top of this, you have the process speed and the possibility of producing tight and therefore safe seams, even where there is wetting of the product» says Business Unit Director Robert Hueber. «Despite this it was hard work to establish the technology with packaging machine manufacturers and end customers/packaging companies. There were reservations about costs and installation».
More than 6,000 sealing stations from Herrmann Ultraschall are now in operation around the world, in packaging plants and plants for manufacturing of packaging materials. Big-name major companies have switched their entire production over to ultrasonic sealing technology for individual applications.
While setting up its Packaging Division, the company has built up a wide-ranging knowledge of application and integration, and now concentrates on what are considered “core applications” and key markets, which bring the users of ultrasonics clearly measurable cost benefits:
- increasing joint quality;
- sealing with product residues in the seal area;
- saving packaging material;
- shortening the cycle time;
- reducing the amount of reworking;
- reducing personnel costs in quality control.

Packaging targets: the answers in practice
Ultrasonics is particularly reliable and suitable for large production volumes, with liquid, pasty, chunky, and fibered products, such as pet food or convenience food and with thermally sensitive products, such as cheese, salad, chocolate, and pharmaceuticals.
But the coffee market also offers applications in which ultrasonics can produce savings, such as welding-on of freshness valves on large packs, sealing of lid film in capsules, and placement of non-woven materials in the capsule bottom.
Advantages over the widely used heat contact process:
- tight weld seals despite wetting of the product in the sealing zone reduce the number of leaky packs;
- weld times, usually shorter than 200ms, permit high output;
- cold weld tools have almost no thermal influence on product or packaging;
- potential hot-tack problems are eliminated: The welds on the foils have already cooled down again at the end of the process and are thus able to withstand stress straight away.