Although they’re the latest technology on the sealer scene, hot air sealers have proven by far the best solution for a large number of industrial applications.
They contain very few moving parts. Even better, the elimination of bands, with their substantial breakage rates, represents a considerable advantage over band sealers. Thus hot air models of sufficient quality offer the lowest maintenance of any sealer, and the longest life. Results: a significant decrease in downtime, with much lower replacement and parts cost.
These sealers are ideal for shorts production runs. Unlike the case with band sealers, changeovers to accommodate a different bag size and seal length are typically a matter of minutes, with adjustments for sealing speed, temperature, and pedestal height. They’re also perfect for high-speed lines; high-performance models from OKI can run up to 120 feet per minute.
Users report that hot air technology is usually ideal for applications including snack, bakery, textile, fasteners, and machine parts packaging. They’re also recommended for materials that are relatively insensitive to heat, such as standard polyethylene bags.
Hot air sealers are not recommended for some thermally sensitive packaging such as polypropylene, where their heat can shrink the material, producing cosmetic problems in the finished bag or pouch. They’re also often not suitable for form, fill, and seal processing, or for flow wrapper lines.
Many hot air sealer models are also unsuitable for applications such as seafood, poultry, meat, or fertilizer. The high degree of corrosion present on such packaging lines, either from the materials being processed or from the need for constant washing, can play havoc with rust-prone internal parts. For example, some poultry processors are forced into a pattern of buying 10 hot air sealers, rusting them out within a year, junking them, then buying 10 more the next year — and on and on.
In response, OKI offers the only washdown hot air bag sealer on the market. Unlike most other hot air examples, it’s recommended for seafood or poultry use. Like several other OKI offerings — both band sealers and hot air models — it features stainless steel construction to prevent corrosion. In this model, that and other design innovations allow frequent, easy cleaning — literally with a hose.
Some hot air sealers also force the user to consult several different gauges to monitor and control factors such as sealing temperature and seal wheel pressure on multiple components.
However, more advanced designs integrate all monitoring and control into a single easy interface. For example, OKI provides a Supersealer model specifically for biomedical package sealing. It features integrated Allen Bradley touchscreen control plus an Ethernet port for connection to validation and record-keeping software.
