Paxton custom-designed air knife system dries water in hard to reach spots on pouches to ease the process of packaging.

THE CLIENT

Since 1986, a Packaging Company has been providing a total solution approach to packaging challenges for Fortune 500 companies in the pharmaceutical, beverage, distillery, chemical, electrical, electronic, warehousing/logistics, plastics, and container industries throughout the Caribbean, Mexico and Latin America. The Packaging company has four business segments: packaging machinery, packaging consumables, spare parts and engineering/ service. The manufacturing warehouse in San Juan, Puerto Rico focuses on packaging pharmaceutical tubing.

THE CHALLENGE

The packaging company in San Juan places the pouches of pharmaceutical tubing through a water rinsing process before they enter the drying tunnel. Once complete, employees grab the individual pouches from the rinsing process and place the wet pouches horizontally on the conveyor for the drying tunnel. The drying tunnel has a chain mesh conveyor with ten feet metal racks to create six individual lines. The conveyor moves at fifteen feet per minute through the drying tunnel. Inside the tunnel, heat is used to dry off the pouches.

The packaging company’s concern is that during this drying process, the fin seal of the pouch does not dry because the fin seal is folded over, and the heat from the drying tunnel is not effective in removing the water from under the fin seal. If water is left in the fin seal it can lead to rusting and leaking during and after the packaging process. The packaging company contacted a Paxton representative and brought up these concerns about the ineffectiveness of their drying process. A Paxton representative was able to assure the engineering manager at the packaging company that Paxton could design a drying system that would be effective in drying the fin seal.

THE SOLUTION

The Paxton Team designed a custom-engineered system to augment the drying tunnel to solve the packaging company’s drying issue. The Paxton team recommended a 20 hp PX-2000 centrifugal blower and a hundred twenty-inch stainless-steel air knife. The air knife will be positioned horizontally across the conveyor belt and be angled anywhere from one to five degrees. The air knife will be able to blow open the fin seal in order to remove the remaining water.