A new high speed oral strip converting system has been supplied to a confidential customer in the USA in 2004. The machine uses Doyen’s highly regarded and proven HDW High Speed Four Side Seal Packaging Machine technology. The oral strip unit converts bulk reels of the product with slitters and rotary cutters, transferring and spacing the product with an accurate vacuum transfer system. Potential applications include any OTC pharmaceutical application that is dosed orally, such as cold relief medicines, cough medicines, throat lozenges, and allergy medicines. In applying this technology, customers benefit from Doyen’s experience and knowledge of processing difficult delicate webs such as these soluble strips.

The high speed machine transfers the bulk oral strip from a large bulk reel, removes the release liner and slits the product into eight lanes. The web without the release is fragile, and accurate tension control in this phase of the conversion is vital if the web is to be successfully converted at high speed. The lanes are separated through a guidance system which transfers the strips at almost zero tension, and at the correct pitch, to a rotary cutting station. The cutter and anvil work at differential speeds to the oral strip web, and as a result the strips are cut, separated and accurately placed onto the open packaging with a vacuum anvil.

For the packaging process, the foil based pouch stock laminate is unwound from a single web split and turn unwind for dual registered print on the finished package. Following the split, the base web is directed to collect the product and the top web is introduced to complete the unsealed web. The pack is sealed with Doyen’s unique HDW high speed, high dwell continuous motion platen sealing head. This head permits high speed volume production even on the most difficult laminates, such as heavy foil based packages. The head has multiple temperature and pressure zones to overcome the consistency and flatness problems associated with large platen systems.

The process continues as the products emerge from the HDW head and are slit and cut to length. As with all Doyen machines, the process is completed with a positive failsafe reject station controlled by the machine’s integral quality system. This system monitors the packages for missing product, joins in the packaging web, and loss of control of critical parameters, and rejects all faulty, or potentially faulty packs. The entire line is completed through a product collation unit and integration of a cartonner, permitting full automatic operation.

The machine operates at 1,200 converted and packed products per minute. The length of the strip can be varied through the servo controlled cutting station. In addition, the width of the product can be changed by adjusting the primary slitter station.

As with all Doyen units, great attention is paid to tension control throughout the conversion and assembly operation, and this tension control is maintained even in emergency stop conditions. As a result, waste is extremely low and the machine can be started and stopped without operator intervention. The machine is supplied with full validation documentation based upon Doyen’s proven system defect policy that ensures that any single fault within the machine will be automatically detected. This system defect – sometimes called double redundancy - ensures absolute reliability of the quality of the product emerging from the machine.