Types of Bag-Making Machines (Polymer)

Choosing a bag machine starts with the technical specification of the final product itself. Often such a specification sounds like "versatility". This means there is a small order for a certain type of bag, and so that the machine does not stand idle the rest of the time, one wants to load it with other products.

As a rule, this approach has a negative effect on the speed and even the quality of the output, because a strictly specialized machine is designed for high loads and speeds.

In general, bags can be divided into several categories:

• Bottom-seal bags are bags: packing bags (bread bags, shop bags), T-shirt bags (the same bottom-seal bag, but with a double seal, which later allows the handles to be die-cut, leaving a strong attachment at the top), box liners, tire bags, garbage bags. That is, all BMW bags (and their modifications — BWW, WWW, BMB) belong to this type.
• Side-seal bags are bags made from sheet and half-sleeve film and, as the name suggests, the seal is on the sides of the bag rather than on the bottom. These bags include bags with a die-cut reinforced/non-reinforced handle (using glue and temperature), various bags with holes (for clothes, bread and other products that need air intake or release), notebook covers (also produced on this equipment), various bags for greens and similar products. Bags in shopping centers and shoe stores belong to this category.
• Bags on rolls. They can have various seal types from items a and b, but they are united by roll winding. These can be trash bags, packing bags (which you can see in supermarkets on a cardboard core or without one), garbage bags — but with a drawstring (tie) — T-shirt bags on a roll. And various modifications of all of these, but with different winding, folds and the presence of tags. Also wicket bags. In short, these are mainly bags for packing chicken. These machines are very fast, because the consumption volume of such bags is high.
• 3-seal bags. These bags can be found in any grocery store; 3-seal means the bag is sealed on 3 sides, and there is often a zipper at the top. These are bags for nuts, coffee, bulk products and more.
• Vacuum bags. These are bags for packing cheese, sausages and other products that need to retain their properties. Such bags are made from multilayer film with the appropriate properties (from 5 layers). In practice, such technologies and films are so far produced on European equipment.

Accordingly, depending on the type of products being made, you need to select a bag-forming machine

Among the best-known producing countries of this equipment are Taiwan, Turkey and China. There are also European, Indian and Korean machines. For each type of bag there is also a model that is widely known and well established in the world. For example, for T-shirt bags, the most common machines in the world are LEMO machines (Germany), which are distinguished by very high operating speed; in Russia the most popular model is the HM-1000DT from the Taiwanese manufacturer HEMINGSTONE, followed by machines of Turkish production (OZ-MAK, GUR-ISH), and the rest of the market is shared among the other equipment manufacturers. For "packing" bags, 6-lane machines of Taiwanese production are well known in Russia (they are called that because they can work with 6 film rolls at the same time, thus delivering high output). Machines from Korea have also shown themselves well. Almost all manufacturers from these countries are equally good in the case of 6-lane lines.

For "rolls", I would like to name the Danish ROLL-O-MATIC as the leader, but because of the astronomical prices of the machines they are almost never found in Russia, so among European machines COEMTER (Spain) can be singled out — these machines have been working in Russia since the early 1990s, which speaks of their high quality, and the new machines have only become better. There is also FAS (Sweden), a manufacturer little known in Russia, whose machines can be assembled from units and have high speed and reliability. Almost all manufacturers in Taiwan, Turkey and China also have machines for producing bags on a roll; one can say that when choosing you should pay attention to parameters such as: speed (m/min, strokes/min), - number of lanes (should be 2), - water cooling of the sealing knife, - machine width in 1 and 2 lanes, - minimum and maximum sealing thickness of the material, - type of tension system (can it work with thin films?), - type of perforation, etc. Of course, electronics, frame thickness and component quality are important factors, as with any equipment. In general, in Russia the known machines are those that are promoted and have at least some service. If choosing a market leader overall, then in my subjective opinion I would rank the producing countries in the following order: Taiwan, Turkey, China, Europe.

I.F. Khabibulin, 7.01.21