At three o'clock in the afternoon, the sun shone obliquely on the quality inspection workshop. Zhou Wei, the technical supervisor, wore white gloves and gently stroked a bag of tuna-shaped pet snack packaging with her fingertips. On the sealing line that should have been smooth, a few subtle wrinkles made her frown-this was the third time she received a complaint about leakage of special-shaped packaging this month. "Traditional flat-press sealing can't tame these 'little monsters' at all." She turned the packaging bag towards the light, and the weak sealing point at the tail of the fish was clearly revealed under the magnifying glass.
The pet food industry is experiencing a "shape economy" boom:
·70% of pet owners prefer to buy snacks with special shapes
·The ductility of three-dimensional shape packaging materials varies by 300%
·The leakage rate of traditional sealing machines for special-shaped packaging exceeds 8%
The dinosaur bone chew sticks launched by a certain brand failed to seal at the ridges, causing the entire batch of products to become damp and deteriorate during transportation. This exposes the pain point of the industry: How to ensure the creativity of packaging design while protecting the lifeline of food safety?
In the ply-pack R&D laboratory, a group of intelligent sealing molds equipped with 128 dot matrix sensors are in operation. When the 3D embossed logo of a pet food packaging bag is detected:
.Real-time deformation capture: Complete 3D modeling of the packaging surface within 0.03 seconds
.Dynamic pressure distribution: Automatically increase the pressure by 15%-40% in the concave and convex areas of the bag mouth
.Temperature gradient compensation: Intelligently adjust the heat sealing temperature of 150-220¡æ according to the material thickness
"It's like customizing invisible pressure clothing for each packaging bag," R&D engineer Zhang Hao demonstrated the latest prototype, "When processing wet food packaging containing gravy, the system will actively increase the lateral pressure by 30% to eliminate the risk of false sealing caused by liquid residue."
The elk antler-shaped packaging bag of a North American pet fresh food brand became the first beneficiary:
·Use flexible silicone mold to replace traditional metal modules
·Pressure compensation system automatically identifies the bifurcated structure of elk antlers
·Integrated laser sealing airtightness detection device
The process that originally required 3 manual inspections is now completed by the machine vision system in 0.8 seconds. 360-degree scanning. The brand's production director reported: "During the transportation test, the package damage rate dropped from 5.7% to 0.3%, and the shelf life was extended by 20%."
The factory test area was still brightly lit in the twilight, and six new pet food packaging machines were undergoing 72-hour continuous pressure testing. Through the observation window, you can see:
· Automatically switch to pulse sealing mode when processing freeze-dried crispy chicken breast
· Start the low-temperature sealing program when encountering active packaging containing probiotics
· Use the "contact-suspension" alternating heat sealing method for degradable corn fiber materials
"The real breakthrough lies in the establishment of a dynamic sealing database," Zhou Wei called up the cloud management interface, "Every time a new shape of packaging is processed, the system will generate a pressure distribution map, and these data can make the equipment of global customers smarter and smarter."
When the last batch of test samples passed the vacuum negative pressure test, the green signal light on the control screen reflected the smiling faces of the technical team. This technical breakthrough, which started with a packaging wrinkle, is reshaping the safety benchmark of the entire pet food industry.
