The Complete Guide To Buying Packaging Machinery

How To Choose A Packaging Machinery And Materials Supplier:

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When it comes to choosing a supplier for your packaging materials and machinery, it is important to do your homework and ask yourself a few questions. You should investigate at least three different suppliers and learn about several important dynamics from each of them.

 

 

Location

It is a good idea to choose a packaging machinery supplier who is relatively close to your geographical location or can easily travel to you. This will have an impact on your business when there is a need for repairs or emergency service for your equipment. Pick a supplier who is in another country and you may find yourself dead in the water for days on end. Choosing a supplier with technicians who are local is always a smart idea. When it comes to your materials, you don't have to be as worried about the physical location as most supplies can be shipped timely.

 

Technicians

It is important to choose a packaging machine supplier with experienced and certified technicians who are professionally trained to work on your packaging equipment. Without the proper certifications, you are taking a chance with your equipment. You could end up paying big when risking service with non-certified techs.

 

 

Customer Service

It may be tempting to source the cheapest packaging materials in an attempt to save money, but if you buy from a company with poor customer service, you may end up losing the anticipated savings anyway. Poor service often means lost dollars. Check out reviews of each vendor and if possible, reach out to current customers and ask about their vendor's customer service and if they would recommend buying from them.

 

Cost

There is an old saying in the packaging industry and that is "shrink film is shrink film". While there are some brands with flashy marketing and sales gimmicks with a premium price, chances are, there are several less costly alternatives that are of equal quality. If you are looking for comparisons, there are generally low-cost films that have lower clarity and higher-cost films that will shine more and have better clarity. Choosing an inexpensive film may cost you in shelf presence.

 

Snake oil and elevator pitches can blur the line between reality and illusion. At the end of the day, you will want to purchase from an honest supplier who carries multiple offerings at different price points and provides superior customer service.

 

 

Parts

Depending on how often your machinery is running, your downtime due to repair needs or emergency service will vary. As time is money, it is important to ask your machine supplier about lead times, parts availability, and preventative maintenance programs.

 

Ask each potential vendor what their average response times for emergency calls are. In most cases, it should not be more than 24-48 hours.

 

Which Packaging Materials Should You Use?

Different types of machinery require different types of materials and utilize different amounts of materials based on the make and model of equipment. For example, while you can save money upfront by purchasing a manual L-Bar Sealer, your cost of goods will likely be higher as a more expensive automatic sealer will generally use less material than the manual machine because the machine will generally be optimized to do so.

 

That being said, the quantity of product that you will be producing must also be taken into consideration. An automatic sealer won't be the right machine for a small business that is only running a couple of thousand items or less each week.

 

This is due to the fact that each model is designed to work with specific maximum and minimum capabilities and materials. Every machine is different. Your packaging line's unique needs must be taken into consideration when choosing the appropriate machine for your application. This can result in higher production costs if your choice of machinery cannot run thinner gauge shrink film. Using thinner gauges of shrink film can result in significant cost savings.

 

Conclusion:

 

Buying packaging machinery is a major investment. The various dynamics of choosing machinery include; safety, budget, physical layout, electrical supply, materials, and a whole host of considerations that can make your head spin.

 

When moving forward with the buying process it is important to start by reviewing the appropriate KPIs with an emphasis on safety first. Next, you will want to be sure to complete the packaging machinery pre-investment checklist. After filling out the information in this valuable tool and getting your results back, you will want to move on to getting quotes from at least two or three vendors.

 

Getting an analysis of your packaging department and collecting data on your current machinery, manual labor, materials, physical footprint, electrical requirements, production levels, types of products and the other important dynamics of running a safe and productive packaging line is key.

 

Once you have been able to fully analyze every aspect of your packaging line, asking for quotes from each of the vendors you are giving an opportunity to quote will provide you with peace of mind that you are going get the best deal and receive the best of what each vendor has to offer.

 

In addition to requesting information and pricing on the packaging machinery you are looking to purchase, be sure to also acquire information about the cost of service, installation, any training available, supply, and repairs. Ideally, you should consider getting a quote for a long-term preventative maintenance plan as this type of program will ensure that your machinery is always running at peak performance and that downtime will be limited when it does occur.

Once you have chosen a vendor to buy from, meeting with your representative and reviewing the machinery offerings that they have will allow you to open a conversation about pricing. Here you can ask about special offers, rebates, additional options, leasing versus buying, and other related dynamics that will help you to get the best price and best plan implemented for your specific budgetary restraints and packaging line needs.

With competitive price and timely delivery, Goodi sincerely hope to be your supplier and partner.

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Finally, it would do you well to schedule quarterly, bi-annual or annual meetings for review with your chosen vendor's sales representative and one of their maintenance technicians.

 

This will allow you to review data from one meeting to the next and identify places where your machinery and materials could be improved upon to further reduce your cost of production, increase speed to market, create greater efficiency and produce a superior performance on your packaging lines KPIs.

 

Once you have purchased your new machinery and have worked with your chosen vendor to install the machinery, train your operators, and all else has been said and done, be sure to schedule your first review before your representative leaves your building.

 

If you heed the information in this guide, we assure you that you will make the best possible choice of packaging machinery for your packaging department. Furthermore, you will be able to ensure the purchase and implementation of the best materials for your products and may rest assured that you have done everything in your power to have the best possible packaging line for your business.

 

Should we not have produced answers to some of your questions or content that is crucial to your particular needs in regard to buying new machinery, contact us directly. Your voice can help others in your position in the future!

 

Our dedicated packaging professionals can and will answer any questions that have not been answered by this guide. In addition to what you have read here, we invite you to peruse our blog which is absolutely packed to the brim with useful information, free tools, and quality content that will make for a highly useful adjunct to this guide.

 

Last but not least, you will find a selection of free tools below that will help you on your journey to finding the best packaging machinery for your packaging line.

 

From all of us here at Industrial Packaging, we wish you well on your quest and again would implore you to contact us if you need anything else that you could not find in this guide.

If you&#;ve ever taken any interest in tape machines or even just had a good look at all the controls of some of the software emulations, you know that there are different recording tape types in existence. They are some times called &#;formulations&#; or &#;tape chemistry&#;.

Audio engineers used magnetic tape in all kinds of different audio work. Besides recording the next hit song in a recording studio, they record live shows, play commercials on the radio all day long, archive important conversations or speeches... You get the picture - you can find tape everywhere.

These different tasks required a very different level of performance and price point. Accordingly, recorders were also specialised in the same way and sometimes only worked well with a specific type of tape.

Spies used recorders that would fit into the pocket and be mechanically quiet!

To satisfy all those different needs, a number of types were developed and manufactured. A lot of them are still available today! In this article, we will help you understand the differences and similarities between them.

Shopping for tape

You can still find lots of interesting vintage/new-old-stock offerings on various online shops and auctions. This can be a perfectly fine solution if you need a single reel every half a year to bounce a few stems. In the case of mix:analog, we are running a 24/7 online service with more than a single tape machine, so we want something more consistent and reliable for our users.

At the time of writing, two brands of new tape are available reliably - Recording the Masters and ATR Magnetics. Between them, they offer those formulations (click on the links to find out more about them):

Before you delve into the datasheets of each one, let&#;s first see what are the main properties by which you can compare tape.

A cross-section of magnetic tape with various layers that make it

Polyester tape base thickness

Polyester base thickness influences two properties of the recording medium. The first is physical rigidity and consequent longevity, and the second is print-through. Print-through is not so important for bouncing stems like in our use case.

Longevity, on the other hand, is really important! Dozens of users will use the tape each day and the reel has to rewind every 45 minutes of usage! So for our use case, the sturdier - the better! A thicker base tape will absorb more shock and be more resilient.

Telefunken M15 tape machine at mix:analog

Metal oxide coating thickness

Metal oxide coating thickness decides the maximum level that can be printed on the tape. As a somewhat vague example, you could say that the metal oxide coating thickness is like the number of bits per sample of an AD converter. More bits, more dynamic range.

A desirable consequence of a thick oxide layer is a higher obtainable signal-to-noise ratio. But it also means driving the tape bias electronics a bit hotter. This can result in slightly more distortion (depending on the make and model of the tape) but the better fidelity usually outweighs that.

We want ta nice thick layer but not too thick because some of the old tape machines don't have the juice in their electronics to actually print that well on a thick oxide tape layer.

Back-coating tape type and thickness

Back-coating mainly serves two purposes :

1. open-reel pancake stability - and
2. static charge dissipation

The additional layer that&#;s rich with carbon prevents slipping while handling an open reel. This is invaluable in preventing a very probable nervous breakdown if the pancake unravels and you have to put it back together by hand.

A pancake of tape - can you see how quickly it could fall apart?

At the same time, the graphite form of carbon in the coating layer also acts as an electric conductor and prevents the static charge to gather on the tape.

The downside of this additional layer is that more tape dust is produced with usage and it&#;s possible to develop &#;sticky shed&#; syndrome. This can be a problem if you plan to store the reel for a longer period of time.

Which one do we use and why?

First, to minimize the number of rewinds, we choose the longest reel of tape that fits on the deck. That translates to a metres (about feet) of tape. That leaves us with three main contenders, the RTM LPR-35, RTM LPR-90 and ATR MDS-36.

Both are strong and modern tapes made to give an awesome performance and long life. The differences are subtle, but let&#;s take a look:

• The polyester base thickness is 20&#;m for both LPR&#;s and 24,1 &#;m for the MDS-36.
• Oxide layer thickness is 11&#;m for both LPR&#;s and 12,7&#;m for the MDS-36.
• The LPR-35 only has a black color back coating, while the LPR-90 has a back coating thickness of 4,5&#;m and the MDS-36 has a 0.76&#;m thick back coating (judging from the thickness also just a thin layer of color).

Considering all of the above, the prime candidates for our use case would be the LPR-35 and MDS-36. The additional back-coating thickness on the LPR-90 might be useful if you&#;re handling the open pancakes a lot, but any additional dust that could potentially be generated is not desirable.

The tape verdict

Out of the final two candidates, we chose the LPR-35 for reasons that, at least in our minds, outweigh the thicker substrate and oxide layer in the MDS-36.

LPR-35, the long-play version of the SM 911

First, the price - the LPR-35 in Europe is almost half the price of the MDS-36.

The second is the delivery format - the LPR-35 is available on a trident reel that&#;s compatible with both our tape decks - the Studer 812 and the Telefunken M15. The MDS-36 is only available on a NAB reel and that would require an additional adapter and handling to be useful.

Lastly, a vast majority of users use the tape at mix:analog for bouncing whole mixes. That translates into dynamic ranges far lower than those of single instrument tracks, so a dB or two of additional SNR that the MDS is not really useful when compared with the downsides.

If you think we should switch to a different formulation, drop us a line at mixanalog.com and let us know more. We&#;re always looking to improve our service!

Want to know more about mix:analog?

For more Tape Coating Machineinformation, please contact us. We will provide professional answers.