While not as conventional as poly bundles, poly bags have unique benefits and applications for tissue product packaging. While bundles are suitable for rolled product, folded product like napkins are too unstable and need to be packaged in poly bags. However, Poly bags are not only for folded products, they are also often used on industrial rolls as the bag end seals are easy to open and are better looking than bundle seals. While poly bags are versatile, the packaging machines that utilize them are not. Most poly baggers on the market today have a long, belted wicket in order to move poly bags to the machine loader. These wickets jut out from the side of the machine and are often 10 feet (3 meters) long. Because of the wicket’s large size and awkward placement, these machines take up a large amount of floor space and can greatly reduce the accessibility of a facility. In addition to this, the traditional belted wicket system has a limited capacity of bags that can be loaded at a time, reducing bagging efficiency.
However, Infinity Machine & Engineering Corp. has retooled their poly bagger to eliminate these major drawbacks. Infinity has developed a multi-shelf wicket system for their G10 and G20 poly baggers that eliminates nine feet of wicket length and simultaneously increases poly bag capacity. The new multi-shelf wicket system features seven shelves that can each be filled up to two inches high with poly bags. When one shelf is empty, the machine automatically retracts the shelf and replaces it with a full one. The switch cycle for the Infinity multi-shelf wicket system is also comparable to that of traditional belted wickets, as shelves are swapped and back in production in 15 seconds. Empty retracted shelfs are annunciated by an illuminated signal and can be restocked with bags safely and efficiently while the machine is in operation.
The compact design of the multi-shelf system eliminates a roughly three feet by nine feet section of machine, dramatically decreasing the amount of space needed to accommodate a poly bagger. The trays on Infinity’s new wicket system are also length adjustable, allowing the machine to run shorter poly bags at higher speeds. While Infinity has radically improved the design of their poly bagger, the new multi-shelf wicket system is still compatible with Infinity’s signature Infusion 3 in 1 modular system. The new more efficient poly bagging module can be seamlessly swapped in and out of a common infeed with casepacking and bundling modules, creating the pinnacle of packaging diversity. Infinity’s latest innovation in tissue packaging machinery has finally enabled poly baggers to be as versatile as the packing they support. To learn more about Infinity’s new multi-shelf wicket system, schedule a meeting with the Infinity sales team today!
