Purchasing a packing machine is not a simple deal, not like when you are buying a book or some daily necessities Searching online, you may just make the decision in 3 minutes by simply checking it appearance.
Differently, buying a machine is more like a long-term investment, and cooperation between you and the packing machine manufacturer.
How to make sure the packing machine supplier you choose is the reliable guy?
How to understand shortly what’s your perfect packing machine to get start?
How to make smart decision without any experience on machinery?
Here we Packway team had made a summary of most frequently questions from customers.
Below 10 FAQ to help you get the best deal on most cost-effective equipment.
Table of Contents
How much is the packing machine?
When you have no clear idea on your business, or maybe only have a preliminary packaging business plan, price seems the simplest question to start and also your biggest concern. Because it can help you understand the rough budget to quickly decide whether it is worth starting the investment or not;
But the “PRICE” question is never simple and hard to answer quick. Because packaging machine is always customized base on case by case, different products will have a variety of packaging requirements, it is usually impractical to get a “standard price”.
Equipment budgets can range from several thousand dollars for entry-level automated equipment to millions of dollars or more for complex systems.
Therefore, our suggestion is that you can tell the packaging machine manufacturer your budget, and let them provide suitable packaging equipment according to your budget, and then decide your business model;
Alternatively, you can do a simple market research first to confirm which products you want to package, the most popular packaging styles and sizes for local customers on the market, and evaluate the speed you want to achieve at the beginning, which will greatly shorten the You confirm the plan time, and the more accurate the quotation you get
Is the packing equipment simple operating?
You may worried about operating process because lack of related equipment use experience.
A good news for you is that 98% of our machines are easy to use even for average worker. No need to require professional knowledge to handle it. You can set the basic parameter on the user-friendly colorful touch screen, like bag length, speed, etc. No complicated parameter need to handle. Because all other parameter will be preset before machine leaving factory, and no need to change them.
Plus we’ll provide detailed instruction books, operation video manual to support you. Also we have professional after-sale engineer to provide online service if still got installation problem.
If you still worried about it, ask your representative or our after-sale service department to get more training.
Which packing machines I should choose?
Packway can provide a wide range of machine series to meet your flexible packaging needs.
Entry-level business you could consider to start with Vertical Form Fill Seal (VFFS) Packing Machine. Why?
The VFFS machine Feature:
* Relatively lower budget;
* Flexible Adjustment to make different bag style: Pillow bag, gusset bag, block bottom bag;
* Fully Automatic from feeding material, weighing products, filling, sealing.
* Has general speed model and high speed model to choose.
If you already have VFFS machine, and now want to expand your market share to enter higher-end customers group. You could try to add Premade Pouch Packing System to your factory.
The PREMADE POUCH PACKING MACHINES no doubt is to handle “Preform Pouch”.
One biggest advantage is the Premade bag will look more high-class. It can be stand up pouch, or zipper pouch etc. Those high-end appearance could bring you better sale performance with higher unit price.
In this way, you could occupied both general customers and high-class customer.
For specific solution, reach out with a professional sale engineer to get more suggestion.
Choose semi-automatic or fully automatic packing machine?
Fully automatic machine requires minimal human involvement.
If you are in a country or a city that labor cost is very high. Then choose fully automatic is always a smart choice. You can compare how much each labor cost you per year you should invest. And make a 5~10 years calculation.
And check about the extra cost you need to invest if upgrade the machine from semi-automatic to fully automatic.
Then you’ll know the answer clear.
Still we didn’t comparing the output efficiency yet. Generally, automatic system total speed can be 3~5 times higher than semi-automatic one.
For sure, semi-automatic is more cost-effective if you really with limited budget, and just want to try a new business, and see the market potential.
Can I use one packing machine for making different bag size and styles?
Technically speaking, the answer will be “YES”.
You may take a few minutes to a few hour to make the adjustment when changing from one bag style/size to other.
But our warming suggestion is that: one-machine-fits-all size doesn’t mean it’s the best. You may hear that “average at everything means good at nothing”. To a person ,or to a machine is the same.
The more variety functions you want from a same machine, to accommodate variations, the machine parameters will generally be more complex, much costly, and lower inefficient than the type for just one specific bag style/size. Sometimes, to use one machine do one product/bag style/size, can gets more output and profit than finding a machine that fits all size.
What’s main difference between film roll making bags and premade Pouch?
Film Roll making bags, generally is a long coil wound around a hollow core. It can be with printing design on it or just transparent blank film. You’ll need to install it onto a VFFS packing machine, while the machine filling products, the film rolls will get through to the bag former and make the bags at the same time, unit-bag-cost is much lower than preform bags,and also can run at high speeds if needed.
For Premade bags, it’s already a finished bag when you get it from bag supplier, it’s just waiting for you to open the bag, filling product inside and then sealing. The main machine will be Preform Bag Packing machine. Unit cost for premade bag is much higher, also have premium appearance, that can’t be comparable.
Do I need a packing machine filler? What’s that?
The packing system generally include several parts
A: Feeding part: Like Z-type elevator, Screw Feeder, Rotor Pump etc;
B：Main Packer for packing and sealing bags
C: Dosing Part,we can also called it a machine filler. It’s for weighing and filling a certain volume products that you want into bags. If you want an automatic system for saving extra labor cost, a machine filler is a must part.
According to your products, there are different fillers can be choose:
Auger fillers mostly use for powder products. With a measuring screw mechanism, it can measure powder with high accuracy of ±1%.
Multi-head weigher generally suitable for grain products. By using weighing buckets to weigh and combine several buckets’ weight before dropping into bags, effectively increase the accuracy.
Liquid pumps are usually used to measure liquid and filling into bags.
A filler machine is part of the whole system, if you don’t have it, then the weighing and filling jobs need to be done by worker/ manual instead.
How fast can a packing machine run?
When evaluating a machine speed, we should consider actual speed and ideal speed.
It’s hard to give you exact packing speed, because there are too many factors will effect the practical speed. Like product feature, bag size, bag material, working environment, commissioning skills of engineer, etc. everything could change the speed a bit.
Generally, we’d give you a speed range between ideal speed and actual speed base on our experience and previous customer cases. For example, general automatic flexible packing speed for VFFS system can pack at 10 – 120 bags per minute.
The best way to estimate actual speeds for your product is sending packing material and your sample products to your machine suppliers for testing.
What materials are you used and how durable is that?
The main frame and contact part we use food grade material stainless steel, comparing to other inferior or general materials, stainless steel provides great guarantee on its quality. It ensure high strength-to-weight, uniquely anti- corrosion function, and high temperature durable.That makes our packing machine can be suitable to fit in any industry.
However, other type of materials like specialty alloys or carbon steel cannot even comparable, one simplest example, is carbon steel will get rust and become much more brittle in very short time .
Choose xxx packing machine, it’s durable and generally has no problem to use for 8~15years and still keep it’s appearance and inner quality as when it is new. Just need to change some wearing spare part and daily maintenance.
What’s the operation process to make a changeover?
We’ve mentioned that the Packing machines can accept different bag styles and bag sizes, without any extra tools.
For premade-bag packing machine, when you need to change bag size and bag style, All you should do is loose the screw on bag holding device, and adjust it’s width and length base on the new bag size. Then loading some new bags inside. Almost all other parameter can be set on touch screen easily.
For VFFS packing machine, the first main process is replace the bag former when you need to change bag style and size.
Another process is to change packing film roll material. We have detailed video to show you how to operated it step by step, generally it’s no problem to finish these process in 20~30minutes.
Decrease the changeover time equals to increase company’s productivity, also profitability of their business.
Reach our engineer to get more professional solution and suggestion base on your cases!
