Packaging Lines

Packaging Line Trouble-Shooting and Failure Analysis

Our company’s business is rooted in trouble-shooting and failure analysis. This physics-based foundation is built on an understanding of equipment/product interaction, and it is also what separates us from our competitors. With our clients, we have lived with these problems, and solved them.

Applications include high-speed filling for medical and consumer products, pharmaceutical tableting, form-fill-sealing, shrink tunnels, aseptic hot-fillers, retorts, autoclaves, cartoners, pick and place mechanisms, web handling, ultrasonic, pressure and thermal bonding, thermoforming, blow molding, injection molding and basic mechanical equipment and functions such as cams and linkages. We also have on staff a full complement of machine control and instrumentation engineers that work side by side with our most experienced engineers in identifying solutions to the most challenging problems.

Reliability Engineering Service

As you approach that critical period before manufacturing begins, we can work with your project team to determine if the manufacturing system is capable of making good product on an ongoing basis. After startup we can work with you to maximize throughput with the statistical confidence that all product in the warehouse will meet your specifications.

At Stress Engineering, we have the experience that comes from years of starting up new product initiatives with manufacturing personnel. We have used the latest tools to enable rapid startup with predictable quality results. Benefits are reduced downtime required to achieve production rates and reduced risk of quality incidents after startup.

Whether you are starting up a new line or modifying an existing line, we can help you achieve the quality and reliability results you are looking for. We can help you maximize throughput by increasing line speed or increasing mean time between failures. Early involvement will help us achieve excellent results together.

Manufacturing System and Package Option Analysis

The total cost of a product and its associated manufacturing are 80-90% set in the earliest stages of the product design process making effective early assessment critical to controlling costs. Once a basic concept is known, evaluating the multiplicity of precise executions of the concept and the manufacturing variations of each is necessary.  Effective evaluations have to reflect factors such as interaction between expected unit volumes and tooling or manufacturing platform choices, market dynamics between different platform technologies, technical capabilities of different technologies relative to tolerance control, raw material costs and how raw materials are to be sourced, assembly methodologies, strategic siting & logistics impacts, and so on.

We are particularly capable in evaluating a multiplicity of dynamic, interactive factors, both technical and economic, to arrive at effective identification of the most cost effective designs and supply chains.

Machine and Unit-Op Mechanical Design

New initiatives and product enhancements often require incorporation of new equipment into an existing high-speed packaging line. We have extensive experience in design and/or modification of equipment for a wide range of applications. This experience includes:

• Nozzles on high-speed fillers
• Heat-sealing systems for FFS applications
• Web handling equipment
• Case packers
• Assembly equipment
• Thermoforming Machinery
• Process Instrumentation and Machine Control

Our engineers routinely undertake projects with unique, complex and challenging instrumentation, control and data-acquisition requirements. This work may be as intricate as measuring electrical impulses in a human muscle, or as extensive as measuring loads requiring our 4-million pound load frame. In addition to developing strain gage data acquisition and reduction, we offer a broad range of services that include:

• Control systems, sensors and transducers
• Test station integration
• Test configuration, control and automation
• Custom load frame design
• Hardware specification, customization and implementation
• Software design, development and maintenance
• Biomedical monitoring and PID control

Custom Test Machine Development

The intensely competitive marketplace has made it essential that manufacturers understand and control both quality and function of their products. Our engineers are experts at custom test machine development. With over 40 years of experience in machine design, electronics, electromechanical devices, data collection and instrumentation, we not only have the skills to develop these machines, we have the depth of physics and engineering to design the right tests.

If you require development of physics-based, purpose-build test hardware, we can help. We do not design or build a machine without first analyzing and understanding the desired actions along with the scores of forces or signals that could corrupt the measurement.