Tensile Testing of Hottack Heat Seal Performance, 1990 Polymers, Laminations & Coatings Conference Proceedings

Predicting the film structure performance during use in the different packaging operations becomes more and more important due to the quicker cycle times of the packaging lines and the development of stronger and higher quality packages.

The presentation describes a method and a testing device for determining the hot tack strength of packaging structures via direct tensile measurement of the seal under known and controlled conditions. The Topwave DTC Hot Tack Tester, originally developed by the Swedish Packaging Institute, Packforsk, provides an automatic and highly accurate test environment where the sealing pressure, sealing time, sealing temperature, cooling time and peel speed are accurately controlled. The automatic sample insertion mechanism eliminates the user influence.

Three different graphic test reports are shown and interpreted: peak peel force verses temperature, hot tack force verses time, and peak peel force verses dwell time. Also three different user examples are listed.

The test method provides a quantitative measure of package performance in many applications. Sealing conditions and package or cycle rate can be scientifically optimized or developed by this test method. Competitive materials can be tested against one another and standard production material can be quality tested on a routine basis without operator influence.