Packaging Machines Overview 

Times are changing; so are the packaging trends. Today’s busy consumer is no longer living in a complacent cocoon and whiling away days consuming things off primitive packaging. The consumer is always on the go and has high expectations of the things he utilizes in terms of, both, convenience and safety. This has led machine builders and manufacturers of equipment to automate and add motion to their packaging machinery.

To keep up with the trend, many small-scale machine builders are in fact, either looking to buy packaging machines online or from elsewhere. The wave that has disrupted the existing packaging trends has also led to an increase in concern for the safety of the workers employed in such units.

How to Ensure the Safety of Workers Around Packaging Machines

These are the list of issues which needs to be addressed to ensure the safety of workers around packaging machines:-

1. Safety regulations in place

The recent years have seen a sharp increase in the number of workers who have met with accidents around packaging machines. The injuries that have been reported usually entail wounds and cuts from film cutting machines, the burning sensation caused because of sealing mechanisms and impacts resulting from rotating pallet loads.

To curb the rise in these accidents, proper safety regulations have been enforced by many organizations responsible for ensuring that proper safety standards are maintained by all industrial units.

2. Instilling critical features in motion control products

The packaging machines should be added with a motion by ensuring that there is complete coordination among all the decentralized drives and automated adjustments to create variances in products.  Also, the presence of camshafts to make room for multiple added functions and inculcation of robotics should also be ensured to render the packaging machines with total automation.

3. Additional features to ensure safety whilst adding motion

A programmable logic controller is a good way to add motion to any packaging machine, automating it in its operation simultaneously. Programming the machines in such a manner so that a majority of the packaging process occurs all by itself is a good approach.

The devices should be integrated with safety, ensuring the availability of each and every law of motion. Further, the utilization of either virtual or real master axes and tools to match the functioning of the packaging machine ensure worker safety.

4. Installing light curtains

A lot of times workers are required to work in close proximity of automated packaging machines that have moving parts. Light curtains are optoelectronic sensors that detect the presence of an entity within a specific field. These curtains are safety devices installed typically around dangerous packaging machines to instantly bring them to a halt as soon as workers accidentally brush against them.

They are well-equipped to detect the slightest of motion—from the brush of a finger and the brush of a hand to the stepping into the accident-prone territory of the entire human body. Moreover, the installation of these light curtains around modern packaging machines is especially of great importance because the curtains make uninhibited access to the machine possible whilst simultaneously safeguarding the workers from any potential accidents.

Final Words About the Use of Packaging Machines

Once all these issues have been addressed, packaging machines renovated with advanced motion features can be utilized to the core in order to avail maximum benefit without meeting with any accidents during the course of the production.