How to Choose an Impulse Heat Sealer for Your Industry

When it comes to choosing the perfect sealer for your industry’s needs, you can easily be overwhelmed with various model features and the different heat-sealing technologies. Choosing a sealer depends on how you are going to use it, what materials you need to seal, and how often are you going to use it.

Ask yourself these questions, do you want speed? Or do you want economical and safe features?

Two of the most common heat-sealing technologies are the constant heat sealers and the impulse heat sealers. These are often compared to one another and leave prospective heat-sealer buyers wanting more details about how each technology works.

Constant heat sealers have seal blades that can be of various shapes, which allows the seals to be of various shapes. The seal blades are constantly kept at high temperatures to fuse the object into the perfect seal. Constant heat sealers are known for faster seals because they do not require a cooling period, but that means you may not receive as clean of a sealing finish as our impulse sealers.

Impulse heat sealers fuse the film by conducting electricity on impulse through a heater ribbon, which dictates the seal to be a straight line. Impulse heat sealers require a cooling period, which makes the sealing process take longer than our constant heat sealers. There are some methods available to overcome a longer sealing time, such as air-cooling and water-cooling, which are forced cooling methods.

In addition to the constant heat sealer and the impulse heat sealer, there are two other heat-sealing technologies that are offered: Ultrasonic sealers and High-Frequency sealers. These four different heat-sealing technologies provide properties that may be essential to your industry, such as seal temperature control, risk of burns, energy consumption, seal finish precision and the amount of time the seal process needs. To break all this information down about the different types of heat-sealers, we are going to explain the features found in each type of sealer so you can make an informed decision.

Impulse Sealer

Impulse sealers get their name from sending a high current on impulse (or instantaneously) to a heater ribbon, that is located on the heat-sealing blade, to generate heat that enables the thermal sealing.  The section to be sealed is placed between the heat-sealing blades; pressure is applied, and is thermal-fused when the heat is delivered on impulse through the heater ribbon.  Once the current stops, a cooling period with maintained pressure is necessary.

Constant Heat Sealer

Constant heat-sealers have a built-in heating element inside the blade to generate heat. Heat-sealing occurs by generating heat and controlling temperature at the seal blade. These types of sealers can seal many shapes, such as the cup seal.

One pro of the constant heat sealer is the fast sealing speed, due to the face that it does not require a cooling period.  A con of this sealer is that, unless you use an automated machine, you need to be a skilled operator to handle the hand-or-foot operated machine as the pressure application and foot application time dictates the seal integrity. Even though a lot of our sealers are known for their “no waiting” heat sealing, this sealer does require some time to warm up before you can seal.

Ultrasonic Sealer

An ultrasonic sealer converts ultrasonic energy of 20Khz frequency energy or higher into a mechanical frequency energy, then the frequency waves travel from the resonator horn to the section to be fused, and generates strong friction heat to seal the object.  Unlike high-frequency sealers, this sealer can thermal-heat almost anything such as film and non woven materials as long as they are thermoplastic. If you are interested in this type of sealer, we offer this model under the US-60B category.

High-frequency Sealer

High-frequency sealers apply high-frequency voltage to the electrodes as the packaging material is being pressed. The high-frequency dielectric heating generates heat from within the packaging material, causing it to seal. The constant frequency and the potential for high-frequency power allow the heat value to get higher as the dielectric loss factor increases. This type of sealer can only be used with resins that have high dielectric loss factors, such as vinyl chloride, vinylidene chloride and nylon.

In order to find a heat-sealer that will benefit your industry, remember to always keep in mind your industry’s need while exploring the four different heat-sealing technologies.