A
Stamp of Approval
Coding unit puts hamburger patties in the
bag
Last year, a Beef Packing Company began producing hamburger patties for Wendy's fast-food restaurants. The North East US based beef processor needed a quick, economical way to put the product in a package that included lot numbers and sell-by dates. When trying to figure out what packaging direction to go, the company received some advice from a neighbor. For six years, is other company used the US-6251
Cryovac Bag Coding System from Pine Brook,
NJ based Bell-Mark Corp. The coder is specifically designed
to attach quickly and easily to all Cryovac bag loaders
and to imprint sell-by dates, establishment codes, USDA
numbers and other variable information. The company took
the neighbor's recommendation and purchased 4 bag coders last
July.
"As product is being pushed into the bag, the Bell-Mark
printer stamps a date and the number of the patty machine
on the bag," points out the company's mechanical maintenance manager.
The US-6251 bag coder offers several performance factors,
including:
A
special ink formulation for quality printing on
Cryovac bags.
Coder
costs at about one-third less than the competition.
A
standard bracket kit for all model bag loaders
with electric controls.
A
compact machine that means more load area
"We hook up onto the Cryovac bag loader to code date the bags
on their flat side immediately before they are filled," said
Jesse Sklar, Bell-Mark regional sales manager. The bag coders at the company's plant are fed by its Formax hamburger patty machines. The bag coder's
code-dating head reciprocates on an air cylinder. From the ink cartridge,
the head swings out along a track that comes out 90° from the
position of the cartridge and comes down stamped on the bag.
The air retracts the print-head back where air pressure is transferred
from one end of the cylinder to another. This moves the printer out
and back during the packaging process. A special ink formulation,
primarily in black and blue, but available in other colors if needed,
permeates the corn starch on the Cryovac bag putting a mark on the
bag that will stay on during the entire production process. The cartridge
is disposable and easily replaced.
"There is a quick changeover [to a new cartridge]," Sklar
stresses. "There is no mixing and filling buckets with ink, and
there is no ribbon that needs to be replaced." Bell-Mark began
developing the bag coder nearly a decade ago when Cryovac needed to
resolve the problem of code dating its bags. The dilemma was getting
a quality code on the Cryovac taped bag, which does not lend itself
to code dating since it is not in a web-rollstock form. To avoid this
problem, the Bell-Mark code dater prints on the side of the package
before it gets inflated.
"They needed a code-dating device to apply the date to the bag,"
Sklar notes. "They needed a reliable and inexpensive dating device
that could hold up in a harsh enviroment." The company spokesperson says that
trace-back makes the bag coder a worthwhile tool in the company's
arsenal. "It gives us the ability to trace product back to the
exact machine that produced it [in case of problems]," he notes.
"The date and machine number are stamped on the bag." Sklar
stresses: "Every company is required to put a sell-by date on
products. What we have developed is a simple, air operated mechanical
coding system that provides a high quality code date at an economical
price."
The company spokesperson added
that ease of use was a selling point. "Not only are they easy
to use, but they are easy to troubleshoot," he says. "The
system is all pneumatic and very basic. With proper maintenance, the
bag coder runs trouble free and is an important part of our production
line."
