Changing Sealer Solutions

Automated sealing devices are increasingly critical parts of the packaging process for manufacturers and contract packagers in industries such as food, health and beauty, and biomedical devices.

Some difficulties that have long been tolerated by users of traditional bag sealers are fast becoming unacceptable. Today’s industrial processes often involve full automation of an integrated manufacturing line. Speed and reliable uptime for sealing equipment are thus vital to the productivity of the entire plant.

Change has also come with the evolution of many manufacturers’ packaging choices. Traditional containers such as jars have given way to new lighter, more flexible bags and pouches. Innovative packaging materials in new form factors demand up-to-date sealing equipment.

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OK International Bag Sealers

From its start in 1982, the OKI Group has grown into a leading global manufacturer of integrated packaging automation systems. The group specializes in innovative, single-source solutions for a wide array of end-of-line system applications. Our portfolio of technology, process optimization, and services helps our customers achieve their productivity and business performance goals.

The OKI Sealer Division specializes in continuous heat sealing platforms. Its plants in the U.S. and Europe manufacture the world’s most advanced hot air sealers, band sealers, pouch handling systems, and integrated conveyors. Today, thousands of OKI’s innovative products provide successful sealing for a wide range of demanding “end-of-line” bag and pouch applications in the worldwide food, staples, and medical device industries.

Hot Air Sealers: The Hot New Thing

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. 

Band Sealers: The Classic Solution

As a traditional, known technology widely installed on industrial packaging lines, band sealers are still the state-of-the-art solution for numerous sealing applications.

They feature continuous motion and a relatively high degree of automation. Their speed is suitable for many though not all automated lines; typical band sealers run up to about 75 feet per minute. By contrast, one high-capacity band-based Supersealer model from OK International (OKI) uses four heaters and other design innovations to allow speeds as high as 120 feet per minute.

Of all available technologies, band sealers can handle the widest variety of container materials, from polypropylene to Tyvek®. They’re the recommended sealing solution for newer laminated bags and stand-up pouches. Where a bag has a thick base layer of foil next to a thin outer laminate skin, the physical contact the band provides is essential. It holds the layers tightly in conformation, so heat can’t cause wrinkling or shrinkage during the sealing process.

This provides specific advantages for certain industries. In poultry packaging, for example, processing can accidentally splash fat on the outside of a bag. Fats are quite effective insulators, forming an undesirable heat barrier. But as long as the amount of fat present is fairly low, the contact pressure in a good band sealer — such as several high-performance Supersealer models from OKI — can penetrate heat through the fat into the bag film to make the seal.

Band sealers are also the recommended solution for manufacturers who are using flow wrappers; performing form, fill, and seal operations; or running a single product for long stretches of time, without changeovers.


OKI sealers feature efficient, compact, low-footprint European profiles. With features such as U-brackets and lift hoods, they’re specifically designed to make access effortless and maintenance easy (as well as infrequent). OKI parts are also easy to find, and competitively priced.

As a final example, biomedical products such as tubing, needles, or operating room trays also present sealing challenges. The medical components industry is strictly regulated. Manufacturers need every bag sealed at the validated, optimized, correct temperature, pressure, and speed. Sealers must enable precise control of these variables, and interact with software that maintains precise verification records.

One OKI Supersealer band sealer model is designed specifically for medical device manufacturing., easy calibration, and pushbutton setting changes. An optional Ethernet connection allows PC recording of all pouches being sealed. Finally, OKI pioneered an innovation that is becoming an industry standard: automatic reverse if parameters depart from settings. OKI machines with this feature never allow a pouch to be sealed outside its parameters.