Positives and Negatives of Fixed Sealers vs. Portable Sealers

Whether you are in construction, food packaging, medical supplies, or manufacturing, there is a high quality thermal heat-sealing device to meet your particular needs.

Available in a wide variety of sizes, systems, and applications, today’s 21st century impulse heat sealers are safe, energy-efficient, and highly reliable.  Thus, the challenge is not whether or not your heat sealing needs can be met in-house (without having to subcontract for that service); but rather, does your company’s needs require a portable heat sealer or a fixed heat sealer? Or both?

Do you have a huge drum, a piece of antique furniture, or some other odd shaped gizmo, gadget, or object that needs to be heat sealed for storage, safety, or shipping?

Are you unable to bring the product, material, or equipment that needs to be sealed to your location? Do you need a heat sealer that is versatile, physically manageable, easy to operate, and can be used anywhere? If so, portable heat sealers are your ideal heat sealers of choice.

These handy, lightweight, easy-to-use heat sealers are specifically designed to provide a solution for those hard-to-seal applications where it is necessary to bring the sealer to the project (vs. the project to the sealer) and/or when the project is so large, strangely-shaped, or heavy. Portable heat sealers successfully tackle and are great for both those normal polyethylene applications and for those challenging cellophane applications that are harder to seal and demand direct and/or constant heat to secure the seal.

Portable heat sealers are lightweight and easy to use. They simply require a squeeze of the handle to open the jaws that are then clamped on the foil, polyethylene, cellophane, or other type of film being sealed. Next, you  activate the application by pressing the start button. The easily-adjustable heat cycle in the process is controlled by a timer. By watching the indicator light on the main housing unit, you are easily able to identify and confirm that the process has started and, you’ll know when it’s completed. When finished, you simply squeeze the jaws once again to release the now-sealed product.

Fixed Heat Sealers

If your particular industry requires consistent and regular high quality heat sealing, investing in a fixed (vs. a portable)impulse heat sealer would be the more cost-effective, efficient, and dependable sealer of choice.

Like portable heat sealers, fixed impulse heat sealers are also easy to use. This is an important feature to consider since you want the operator(s) of your heat sealers to feel both confident and safe when using the equipment. Heat sealers (whether they are portable or fixed) that are too-complicated to operate require constant reviewing of operating instructions or the need to hire employees for the sole purpose of running them.

With a fixed impulse heat sealer, you don’t have to wait for it to warm up every time you want to use it; once you’ve started up the system, it’s ready for the day’s work.

State-of-the-art fixed impulse heat sealers are able to eliminate downtime, reduce labor costs, and save on electrical expenses all due to this one simple feature – no warm up period! Electricity is only being used during the actual heat sealing process. And, since it’s already warmed up and ready-to-use after initially turning on the system for the day, you won’t have employees standing around wasting time waiting for your fixed impulse heater to get hot every time it’s about to be used.

Although the fixed impulse heat sealer is ready-to-use from the get-go, it’s critical and important to understand that there is no component on the equipment that is constantly hot all the time. Unlike some heat sealers that have a sealing bar that is always hot, fixed impulse heat sealers are safe and (economical for your company) because none of the components are always hot.

The ready-to-use heat sealer is only hot when the system is actually being operated.

Further, another positive to investing in a fixed impulse heat sealer is for the clean seal it produces as a result of the fusion and cooling processes that take place during the process. With sealing frames and levers made of aluminum (which can thus handle high heat-conductivity), it enables the cooling process to deliver strong and precise seals.

While a portable heat sealer is versatile and can be used anywhere, it requires time to heat up, can be easily (or accidentally) picked up and/or misplaced by operator(s), and is more expensive in the long-run. Fixed impulse heat sealers may be more of a financial investment at the front-end, but are economical long-term, don’t demand a lag time waiting to be warmed up, and consistently produce clean seals.

Both heat sealing systems have their pros and cons; what’s important to consider is how, where, and why you will be using it.