Stretch film breaks and tears are common for many businesses.
That means potential wastes that can be detrimental to your bottom line.
The good news- -it is preventable.
But to prevent film tears, It is imperative for us to learn all the possible reasons and at which stage China stretch film breaks or tears.
Reason #1: Heavy unwind force builds up
The implication of uncontrolled unwind force may cause build-up tension (the stickiness) on the films during the transportation of the rolls of stretch films to customers.
The film’s heavy unwind force (or unwanted tension/stickiness) may cause film breaks during unwinding for packing.
Also, it could cause the containment force applied during wrapping, not optimal, leading to film tears during transportation, which means damaged goods on arrival.
As the consequences are down the line to the end customers, which are costly to brand owners, we must solve this at the production level.
Reason #2: Gels on films produced
From the beginning of the film production, the plastic resins (or pallets) are melted and extruded into films.
Quality control is of utmost importance to Thong Guan from the get-go.
At the start-up, where temperature differences may occur or film size changes during production, unmelted resins may happen.
When the unmelted resins get extruded on the film, gels occur. They can be rather small that sometimes it is not visible to the naked eye.
Reason #3: Uneven thickness on films Film extrusions are complex.
Problems in extrusion may occur from within the die.
Films extruded may be uneven that leads to a whole range of consequences.
As such, consistency is key.
Many manufacturers rely on the operators’ skills to adjust the T-die extruder.
However, potential human error may occur.
With improper adjustment of the T-die, the extrusions of the melted resins may cause variations in the film thickness.
Films with uneven thickness cause films to snap easily during unwinding or wrapping.
Reason #4: Inconsistent air supply into the pneumatic panel
When wrapping on automatic wrappers, the entire wrapping applications rely heavily on your machine settings.
One of the settings is the application time that uses a pneumatic system.
A “jerk reaction” may occur during wrapping that leads to tearing the film during wrapping.
The “jerk reaction” of the pneumatic system is caused by the aftereffect of air concussion and non- motion build-up- -potentially due to the velocity variance, friction forces, and more on the system.
Simply put, inconsistent air supply into the pneumatic system leads to potential film tears. This usually is not a problem for thick gauge films.
However, on thin gauge films, the likeliness of snapping is high.
Reason #5: Overstretching the limits, breaking the thresholds
Every stretch film comes with a set of properties and thresholds.
Overstretching your films will definitely lead to a high risk of film snapping during wrapping, if not film breaks during in-transit.
Using wrong films for wrapping applications is also common.
As much as we know the importance of packing your goods securely, this industry lacks visibility and traceability.
Article author: Sue Su
Key words: stretch film, stretch film break, stretch film tear, China Stretch Film
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Stay Healthy and take care!
Shenzhen World Packing Industrial Ltd
Stretch Film & Packing Tape Specialist , Top China manufacturer