Heat Sealing Machine

If your pack is a flat bag or a pouch

This is the largest group by a distance, and it is the impulse and band family. The bag mouth is laid flat and closed with a straight seal across it.

Within that, the format follows the volume and the operator: a hand-pressed bar for occasional work, a foot pedal when the bag needs both hands, a table top machine for steady shift work, and a continuous band sealer once bags are queuing.

If your pack is a cup or a tray

A cup sealer is a different machine. A pre-cut film lid is placed on the cup rim and a heated die presses it down, sealing right around the rim. That is what closes a curd or lassi cup, a juice or drink cup, a sweet or dessert cup and a takeaway container.

The die is made for the cup, which is why the cup - not the volume - is the first thing to settle. Send the cup and the lid film with your enquiry.

If the pack has to keep air out

Heat sealing closes a pack; it does not empty it. If the point of the pack is shelf life rather than containment, the machine you want removes or replaces the air before it seals.

Vacuum machines draw the air out. Gas flushing replaces it, which is what you need when a hard vacuum would crush the product. Both are separate ranges and both end in a heat seal, which is why buyers often arrive here first.

If the film has to shrink around the product

Shrink packaging is heat sealing followed by a second heat stage. The film is sealed round the product or the multipack first, then a tunnel shrinks it tight to the shape. Multipacks of bottles, tins, soaps and books are made this way.

If what you are picturing is a tight transparent skin rather than a bag with a seal across the top, this is the range to look at.

What we need to point you at the right one

A photograph of the finished pack you want, the material it is made of, and how many you make in a day. From those three we can name the machine, and if it is not one we supply we will say so rather than sell you something adjacent to it.

Induction sealing, and why it looks like nothing at all

There is one more member of this family worth knowing about, because buyers meet it constantly and rarely realise it is a heat seal.

The foil disc under the cap of a bottle of oil, a jar of pickle or a container of supplements is applied by induction. The cap goes on with the foil wad inside it, the bottle passes under a head, and a magnetic field heats the foil so that it bonds to the rim of the container. Nothing touches the bottle and no visible machine mark is left.

It is the answer whenever the pack is a rigid container rather than a bag, and whenever a customer needs to see that a pack has not been opened before. That combination covers most edible oil, sauce, honey, nutraceutical and cosmetic packing in India.

If what you were looking for is a tamper-evident seal on a bottle or a jar rather than a seal across a bag, this is the machine, and it belongs with the capping range rather than with the bench sealers.