Earlier today I received a question that I thought I'd share with our readers. It is one of those pretty basic things that we take for granted having worked with these systems day in and day out for years, but when you're new in the business it's an important question to ask.
One of the newer members of our sales team ran into an pharmaceutical application in which our customer was looking to seal a small (i.e.short) bottle with a 24mm closure. Very doable so far. He then added that the conveyor, conveyor belt and guide rails were all made of stainless steel. This is where we get a little more complicated.
The induction sealing process takes advantage of two things - an electromagnetic field and metal. Our Super Seal line of induction sealing systems create electromagnetic fields which then induce heat into the foil liner inside the cap. In turn this softens the polymer coating on the bottom side of the foil and ultimately it adheres to the container resulting in a hermetic seal.
In this instance the packager is also introducing three items (conveyor, belt & guiderails) that will also have heat induced into them via the electromagnetic field. Typically the conveyor and belt don't play too much of a role as they're far enough away from the sealing head. However, depending on installation the guide rails can at times interfere.
How do you get around this? A solution that tends to work well time after time is replacing the stainless steel guides with plastic guiderails underneath the sealer. You could simply remove the rails, but it is important to ensure your bottles are traveling down the center of the sealing head of your system so we typically recommend replacing them with plastic.
Thanks for the question Manish!