PACKAGING SOLUTIONS

Vertical-Form-Fill-Seal
What is VFFS?

1. Film Winding

VFFS packaging machines starts with a roll of film material; often polyethylene, cellophane, foil or paper rolled around a drum. An optional motor-driven unwind wheel is often installed to drive the film roll to assist the driving
of the drum. This option improves the unwinding process, especially when the film rolls are large.

2. Dance Rollers


During unwinding, the film is passed over a set of dancer arms and rollers located at the rear of the machine. The arm incorporates a series of rollers
that move up and down to keep the film under tension.

3. Print Registration

Once the film has passed under the registration sensor this detects the registration mark on the printed film and in turn, controls the dancer rollers
which keep the film positioned correctly so that it can be cut at the appropriate spot.


4. Forming Collar

Next, the film enters the forming tube collar assembly. As it runs over the forming tube, the film
folds with the two outer edges overlapping each other. This is the beginning of the bag forming
process. A rotary encoder is placed near the collar of the forming tube. The size of the bag length is set on
the HMI and once this length is reached, the film transport stops (on intermittent motion machines
only; continuous motion machines do not stop.)

5. Vertical Heat Sealing

The heated vertical sealing bar closes and makes
contact with the vertical overlap on the film, welding
the the overlapping layers of film together.
On continuous motion VFFS packaging equipment,
the vertical sealing mechanism remains in contact
with the film continuously so the film does not need
to stop to receive its vertical seam

6. Traction Belt

The film is drawn down by two motors which drive the friction film traction belts located on either side
of the forming tube.

7. Horizontal Sealing Perforation And Cutting

Next, a set of heated horizontal sealing jaws come together to make the top seal of one bag and the
bottom seal of the next bag. For intermittent VFFS packaging machines, the film comes to a stop
to receive its horizontal seal from jaws that move in an open-close motion. For continuous motion packaging machines, the jaws themselves move in up-down and open-close camming motion to seal the film as it moves.

8. Filling

While the sealing jaws are closed, the filling that is being packaged is dropped into the hopper
(sometimes assisted by an auger) and then is fed down the middle of the hollow forming tube and
filled into the bag. A filling apparatus like a multihead weiging scale or auger filler can be used for the correct measurement and release of discrete
quantities of product to be dropped into each bag

9. Finished Product

The finished sealed product is taken away on a conveyor for final packaging often called the
secondary line to be picked by a robot such as a Trio SCARA and boxed. This process can also be
controlled by the same Motion Coordinator as the one used in the rest of the machine

Trio Motion Vertical Form Fill Solutions