The machine you see above is a Bartelt brand intermittent motion horizontal pouching machine. This machine has been around a long time and for many years this machine was the mainstay of the Pouching industry. This machine was designed way before the age of microelectronics. It uses a single main motor, which through a gear reducer drives a long shaft fitted with many cams and eccentrics to achieve intermittent motion from the continuous motion of the motor. Intermittent motion is necessary to perform the operations on the pouch that can only be done in the stopped position. These operations are: making the top, bottom, and side seals on the pouch film, also filling the pouch and cutting the pouch. The pouch only needs to stop just for a fraction of a second, but it still does need to stop because all the devices that perform the above operations are stationary and the film cannot be moving through them when they are working. I have seen speeds as high as 80 pouches per minute on large pouches achieved with these machines.

On the machine above I added some improvements to make it more reliable and user friendly. An AC vari drive was installed to replace the Reeves drive, which used to slip under pressure. I added Digital Temperature Controls with PID looping, also a new registration photo eye system to detect the proper cutoff point between the pouches. The Bartelts are very reliable machines when they are properly maintained.