Actually this article is cited from our client Brendan who bought our e liquid production line in Feb, 2014, thanks for his positive comment and experience sharing about our machines:
Our mission is always to serve our customers. We think that this post might be helpful to many of you who are growing your ejuice manufacturing operation.
A lot of our customers either own, or are in the market for a filling+plugging+capping machine. We have had some experience of our own operating one in order to complete some in-house packing needs. Depending on the size of an operation, it can make a lot of sense to have one on-hand to produce batches of product before considering shifting production to a dedicated contract packaging service.
In many cases, these machines are more affordable and straightforward to operate than you think. Here are some considerations and recommendations from our experience:
The ejuice Bottle
Spend some time to chose your bottle before you chose your machine. The machine will be built around the bottle and initially set up according to the bottle size and shape. Some machines can handle both glass and plastic bottles, but adjustments are always required to change between sizes and shapes.
Child proof caps are very easy to work with, however tamper evidence rings can be fickle. Over tightening, temperature, and manufacturing differences can result in breakage of the ring before it is fully tightened. We discovered that heating up our caps before they are tightened was very effective for protecting the tamper ring when fully tightening the cap.
Action type
Turntable or inline action? Multiple inline rows? There are many layout options, each with an advantage or disadvantage. We use a turntable because the single filling station is easy to clean up, and each step can be easily inspected.
An inline filling machine can be very easy to adjust for different sizes and shapes of bottles which has its own value if you anticipate using unique containers. Also, an inline machine can be easier to operate because there is less happening at once, and the process is easy to slowdown or stop. With a turntable, any error that requires the machine to shutdown will also require several steps to restart, which is difficult for a beginner to manage.
Filling Machine Cleanup
Quick, and inexpensive cleanup is essential. Silicone hoses costs about $1/foot or more, and throwing them out or keeping them together with each separate batch is preferred over reuse. Small batches will require complete cleanup, for instance when a set of samples is needed, but if that takes 20-30 minutes you will hardly get anything done on days when there are lots of different flavors to run.
The use of a peristaltic pump is very desirable. This system is clean from the beginning, keeping all the fluid isolated from air, contaminants and machine parts. piston type pumps can be fast and precise, but they will require thorough cleanup of the pumping mechanism with each batch. Remember, even the smallest drip is enough to completely contaminate your machine.
Filling Machine Speed
Speed is proportional to precision. More speed equals less precision in our experience. For high viscosity VG juices, you are going to need more time to push the thicker fluid out of the hose and into the bottle, so do not expect a blazing fast 60 bottle per minute machine. One solution to slow flowing juice is to implement dual filling stations, so that the bottle is filled half way at each step.
Capping and plugging can also be time consuming, but they are absolutely critical to quality control. We encountered problems initially with our plugs not fitting correctly, and with poor quality capping due to a bad capping head.
Calibrating the pressure of the plugging piston, adjusting the tension of the capper and purchasing a quality capping head with replaceable rubber tension cups solved this problem. Another trick that we have been using with our caps is to heat them up prior to capping in order to help them
Ejuice Capping
A capping head that is made for your bottle should be easy to order online. Do not consider hand capping more than a couple dozen bottles, as strain and carpal tunnel syndrome are very easy to encounter from the repetitive motion. Machine assisted capers are a handy tool to use and worth the investment before a fully automatic machine is put into service. If you need an ejuice capping solution, check out Kinex Cappers. They were very helpful and service oriented when we worked with them.
Automatic machines like our turntable are very effective, as long as the turntable stays clean and dry. Any fluid residue on your bottles will cause them to spin while the capping head is in place, so constant quality control is necessary.
Automatic Bottle Labeling Machines
An automatic labeling machine is money well spent. Ours is a conveyor type that keeps the containers upright as they are moved through. The adjustments and micro adjustments required to operate the machine can be frustrating to learn, but once mastered the time savings is gold.
In addition to a fully automatic labeling machine, we have come to rely on our industrial Zebra 140xi4 printers to print black ink on our standard label templates. The printers pay for themselves in saved offset printing costs after about 20k labels. For a juice line with many different batches, dating, and bar-code needs, upgrading to a print on demand label printer, or a thermal transfer label printer is much more flexible than having everything made with an offset press.
Weight and Portability
Most parts on a filling machine will be stainless steel and very heavy. Ours is over 1,200lbs, so do not assume that you will be able to move it around easily or quickly.
For hobby flavorist or shop owner that is thinking about making the leap to their own production facility, hopefully this article provides some perspective. There are also many dedicated and professional contract manufactures that can leverage their high volume to help you startup your juice line.
Filling Machine Manufactures
We would gladly refer any of our customers to LOM MACHINE in China. Importing a machine is fairly straight forward and saves a lot of cost, even if it takes some time.
LOM MACHINE has provided excellent post installation support to us and has been very quick to keep our system up and running, even airmailing a replacement part when a power supply needed to be replaced.
Other manufactures can be found online. From our experience, whatever communication and service experience you have before the purchase probably continue after. |
