Bag forming, filling and sealing machine: Hygienic design of the format adjustment

National Packaging Systems is one of the leading manufacturers of form, fill and seal machines based in South Africa.
Products such as powder, sugar, coffee granules, sauces and other liquids are packaged in this vertical form, fill and seal machine. The machine doses the product and fills it into the pouches, seals and separates the pouches and transports them to the next processing step via a conveyor belt.

Depending on the width of the pouches, the flow-wrapping machine can fill up to twelve lanes simultaneously. For this, the customer was looking for maintenance-free bearing technology that can carry out format adjustment of bag sizes. As product contamination from lubricants must be avoided in the industry, the solution had to be lubricant-free, i.e. be able to operate in dry mode.

Since then, the manufacturer of packaging machines has relied on maintenance-free plain bearing solutions from the igus product portfolio.
A total of 19 different polymer plain bearings are used at various points.

For the format adjustment for the flexible changeover to different bag sizes, National Packaging Systems relies on a counter-rotating drylin Easy Tube linear tube system. The drylin SET Easy Tube is a linear unit that specialises in light adjustment tasks. Made up of just a few components, it is compact and effective in use. The external tube guides the guide carriage(s) and at the same time protects the trapezoidal threaded spindle and nut from external influences. The system also fulfils the requirements for freedom from lubrication and maintenance, while the internal spindle also provides a hygienic design.
The complete solution from a single source also impressed the customer even before the series launch.