Making the Right Choice
There are many types of sealers available. A brief summary on a sealer’s function, size, speed, and heating elements will help you determine the right sealer for your needs.
Function:
There are mainly 2 types of sealers, an impulse heat and a direct heat sealer.
The impulse heat sealer is used for any thermoplastic material such as a poly bag that requires a lower temperature. It can also be used to seal poly–coated materials. Our impulse sealers with a 2mm wide seal can seal together two sheets of plastic up to 6 mil in thickness (that's 12 mil total thickness.) Some of the wider 5mm sealers can seal together up to 8 mil in thickness (16 mil total.)
On the other hand, the direct heat sealer or constant heat sealer provides a higher temperature on heated jaws, so it is mostly used for cellophane and other thicker thermoplastic or poly-coated materials.
Other functions to be considered in selecting the right sealer are if you need a cutter, if you need to vacuum seal and/or gas purging.
Size:
The size of sealer to use depends on the width of the material to be sealed. For easy handling, add one inch to the width of material to get the size of sealer needed.
Types & Speeds:
- Portable Sealers: lightweight, handy, very versatile and does not need a big work area. They are fairly quick to operate but the sizes are limited.
- Hand Sealers: the simplest and most economical type of sealer. The sealing bar is manually lowered. Hand sealers are available from 4" to 40" Approximately 6-20 packages can be sealed per minute. These sealers look like a large stapler!
- Foot Sealers: provide a faster sealing operation. The sealing bar is pedestal controlled, leaving two hands free for faster operation. Sealer is available from 12" to 35". Approximately 8-20 packages can be sealed per minute.
- Auto Sealers: provide a very fast sealing operation. Automatic sealers have a continuous automatic motion at a pre-set time cycle or they can be placed in a manual mode and actuated by a foot switch for each intermittent cycle. Sealer is available from 12" to 24". Approximately 20-50 packages can be sealed per minute.
- Continuous Band Sealers: provide very fast sealing operation with unlimited length. There are several models available with different features, such as horizontal seal head, vertical seal head, tilting seal head, left or right side feed, gas purging, coding and imprinting.
- Vacuum Sealers: remove the air from a package as well as seal it. There are several different types available with such as chamber vacuum machines, retractable nozzle vacuum machines and home type machines.
Heating Elements for Impulse Heat Sealers:
The heating element comes in round or flat. In most sealers, the round and flat wire can be interchanged. The flat wires are used to seal plastic bags or tubing. The round wire is mainly used for cut and seal on shrink bags/film. There is very little seam left. Impulse sealers are available in round wire, 2mm, 3mm, 5mm , 8mm, or 10mm. A wider seals means a better seal so if seal integrity is very important to you, choose a sealer with at least a 5mm wide seal. A good example would be a food application where you need an air tight or liquid tight seal. Round wires are used in cut-and-seal applications such as shrink film, shrink bags and poly tubing. Double impulse sealers are equipped with two heating elements (top and bottom) for faster heat penetration which makes them ideal for sealing thicker materials or gusseted bags.
Standard Features of our Impulse Heat Sealers:
Unless otherwise stated, sealers are of metal construction, the body is formed out of a rugged cast aluminum and the pivot is all steel. The sealers are all of industrial quality and built to last. AIE hand and foot sealers are UL listed.
Most impulse sealers are equipped with plug-in electronic timer and built in micro-switch. No warm-up time is needed. Power is used only when the sealing bar activates the micro-switch. The variable timer let you seal various types and thickness of plastic films. A signal light and beeping sound come on to let the operator know the heat cycle is completed and the seal is done. You want to set the timer to the lowest possible number that gives you a good seal. That will maximize the life of the heating element and the PTFE Non Stick covers.
The number in the model number usually indicates the size of the sealer in mm; so a 200 is approximately 8" and a 1000 is approximately 40". Divide mm by 25.4 to get its equivalence in inches.
Easy to Operate Simply place a bag between the sealing bars, press down and release.
90 Day Warranty Most sealers come with a 90 day parts and labor warranty except on the usable parts. Sealers must be returned prepaid to Doug Care Equipment or our authorized service agency for warranty service.
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