B&R Moll gives advice on how packaging companies can get the best output from their folder-gluer equipment, including documenting a company's internal operations with standard operating procedures, adding case packer, accumulation conveyor, case sealer

May 2, 2022 (press release) –

The packing business relies heavily on folder-gluer equipment. Industries across the globe are using them to promptly and effectively build a greater packaging system. This packaging can be made in a variety of products, including foldable paper and cardboard, and can be pre-branded if needed to guarantee optimal market presence during the implementation stage of the company’s management.

Corrugated boards, polymers, and solid boards are among the materials that the folder gluer can work with. Folder gluers are most typically found in the packaging business, where they’re useful for manufacturing multi-point, crash-lock bottom, and straight-line cartons from flat blanks. They are, nevertheless, used in a variety of different sectors due to their adaptability and advantages.

Numerous businesses profit greatly from folder gluer equipment. They boost worker productivity while reducing the time it takes to complete several jobs. The machine folds a blank along pre-creased lines before applying an adhesive to maintain the appropriate shape, transforming flat material into a product that may be utilized for a variety of applications.

Purchasing and installing a folder gluer is not enough to maximize its output rate. Nevertheless, there are a few easy, practical strategies to ensure that a folder gluer machine is always as efficient as possible. If you implement the following strategies, your folder gluer will run as swiftly as its architecture permits.

Document your Internal Operations with Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

Have a mechanism for recording your core procedures if there isn’t an overall SOP. This will help you to obtain consistent quality standards and recurring, standardized configurations.

Examine Your Work Practices at Each Level

Provide workers with the skills they require to do their tasks effectively. Incorporate specimen racks and separators. Set up columns to create the cases, minimize spins, and limit motions as much as feasible.

Assess Walking Patterns During Setup and Production

Pay attention to the tasks that need to be carried out consistently and create a pattern so that the employees understand the procedure completely and can complete those activities quickly.  This is necessary to prevent individuals from overlapping on anyone’s route throughout activities, particularly in the vicinity of the processing site.

Standardize Setup Processes

Folder gluers can often handle hundreds of meters of material each minute. Once they’re fully operational, they’re usually intended to go in a consistent manner. However, many folding-gluing assembly lines are slowed down by long, winding set-up operations.

It may be necessary to make time-consuming modifications and revisions rather than doing everything correctly the first time. The most streamlined and profitable folding-gluing firms create guidebooks that eliminate such issues. It may require a long time to compile an official set of documentation that covers all possible scenarios.  However, because well-established standard points would always be accessible, expanding to the existing portfolio will get simpler over time.

For Guiding Principles, Keep a Ledger that Covers the Configuration of Every Equipment.

Colleagues should communicate their knowledge and expertise. Automate the procedure and make newcomers’ learning more systematic. Minimize installation hours by determining the ideal configuration for every unit. Moreover, create a step-by-step procedure for setting up every unit. Describe the duties of the wrapping individuals and the folder-gluer controller and make a distinction between them.

Add a Case Packer

Most folder gluers are built to accommodate straight into packaging lines, slowing them down considerably. For a rapid, dependable folder gluer, physical, unskilled labor packaging activity might quickly generate a hindrance. Simple, semi-automated case packers may significantly accelerate the process by keeping everything moving. Since some extra learning may be necessary, integrating a well-designed packer into a factory line is usually rather straightforward.

Packers, like folder gluers, can profit from those very exact operational changes that enable folder gluers to achieve their full potential. Invest time and work into standardizing your new packer’s startup operations, and it will reward you back.

Add an Accumulation Conveyor

This slows down your package glazing and enables you to finish extra cartons in the same amount of time. As a result, your packaging staff will get extra time and psychological comfort, which will inevitably manifest in a faster packing operation.

This differs from making your employees pack immediately off the folder-compression gluer’s belt, where there is no buffer if some packages need to be inspected or if any cartons slide from their grasp. When a company doesn’t have an accumulation conveyor, its packaging staff will try to create their local reservoir by unloading the compression belt as quickly as possible.

As a result, the operating environment becomes extremely inconvenient. The accumulation conveyor permits your packaging workers to get additional packages per meter of conveyor, resulting in a more comfortable operating environment and the capacity to quickly fix any box difficulties that arise.

Integrate a Case Sealer

A box sealer equipment, rather than employing a manual taper, enables you to totally control the sealing operation, eliminating the need for your wrapping workers to physically seal any boxes. Simply run the box through the box sealer machine, and the container will be secured and packed electronically.

If you want to take it a step further, you may even pack your containers without sealing the bottom of the box. The cover sealing will seamlessly bind the head and bottom of the container simultaneously. This expenditure will spare you 3-6 seconds for every box on average.

Incorporate Automated Quality Control Features

Even the most meticulous folder gluers commit blunders every now and again. Quality control procedures that depend too much on human participation and attention tend to exaggerate the consequences of mistakes.

Automated systems that identify incorrect glue patterns, mismatched stock, and other issues can boost production significantly. Many of these systems may also be simply installed on a variety of folder gluers.

On that premise alone, quality control technology that automates a certain portion of human labor should be simple to justify. Automating the quality control features improves the efficiency of a whole folder gluer manufacturing line.

Ensure that Your Glued Boxes Do Not Need 100% Inspection

If you’re looking for strategies to ramp up your production cycle, this is the most crucial step. If you don’t see the means to sample some containers for examination or have your customer allow a certain proportion of small flaws, you won’t be able to increase your folder gluer’s productivity.

However, by managing the condition of the packages that are loaded into your cases using a monitoring system that examines your boxes throughout the gluing process, you can boost your trust in the entire method.

You’ll never be able to guarantee that every package will be excellent, but you’ll be able to confidently claim that you’re generating client-approved package excellence at a passing rate that your customer has consented to.

Improve the Glue System

To maintain uniformity within the goods generated, an extruded glue system is required. Glue scanning is required to ensure that the correct quantity of glue is administered to the surface in order to achieve a high-quality adhesion. Here, top-notch control is crucial, and it’s generally given by a device that not only detects the adhesive but also reads the codes.

Other applications for the glue system controller are possible. It could perhaps be programmed to run a tape head or to generate scheduled concussive blasts to compress a certain panel, for example. Multiple operations, such as placing the tape on a container to allow for subsequent sealing, are routinely requested by clients.

Final Thoughts

Today’s best folder gluers are frequently so good right out of the bag that it seems impossible to improve them. However, in many circumstances, investing a little time and energy into increasing the output of a folder gluer machine will increase its value.

Most folder gluer users have found that the various methods listed above have yielded positive consequences.

If you are interested in buying a high-quality folder gluer that you can modify according to your liking, then get in touch with B&R Moll. At B&R Moll, we have a variety of folder gluer machines, which means that you can select any equipment that corresponds with your requirements.

We offer packaging print folder gluers, commercial print folder gluers, and LP Record Album Folder Gluer. In the packaging print folder gluer category, we have one of the most condensed folding systems in the market. It is called the Moll Compact. If we move to the next category of commercial print folder gluers, you get the option of choosing between Regal System, Pile PT System, Marathon System with Final Fold, and Premier 36 System.

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