VFFS machines create finished packages from a roll of plastic film using six essential components: the film unwind system, forming tube and collar, vertical sealing bars, horizontal sealing and cutting system, filling system, and control system. These machines produce most of the bags you see in stores—from chips and candy to coffee and pet food.
The film unwind and feed system controls how packaging film moves from the roll into the machine, maintaining perfect tension and alignment throughout the process.
This system uses a series of rollers and sometimes belts to guide the film smoothly through the machine. The tension control prevents the film from stretching or sagging, which would cause wrinkled or misaligned bags.
The forming tube and collar transform flat packaging film into a continuous vertical tube by wrapping it around a metal cylinder.
The forming collar acts like a funnel that guides the flat film around the forming tube.
Your bag of chips gets its shape here. The size of the forming tube determines whether you’re making a small snack-size pouch or a family-size bag.
Vertical sealing bars create the backbone of your package by joining the film’s overlapping edges with heat and pressure. This creates a strong seam running down the entire length of the bag.
The bars press the overlapping film edges together while applying precise heat—hot enough to melt the plastic layers together but not so hot that they burn through. This happens continuously as the film moves downward.
This vertical seal gives the pouch its cylindrical shape and ensures nothing leaks out the back. Without it, you’d just have a loose wrap of plastic around your product.
Horizontal sealing jaws close the bottom of one bag and the top of the next bag simultaneously, then cut them apart to create individual packages. This happens in a fraction of a second, hundreds of times per minute.
The heated jaws clamp across the tube of film, creating a strong horizontal seal. An integrated knife then slices through the middle of this seal, separating the completed bag from the one being formed above it.
The filling system dispenses the exact amount of product into each bag through the center of the forming tube. Different products require different filling mechanisms to ensure accuracy and prevent damage.
The filler releases product only after the bottom seal is complete but before the top seal begins.
The control system acts as the machine’s brain, coordinating every component through a programmable logic controller (PLC) with a touchscreen interface. It ensures all parts work together in perfect synchronization.
Sensors throughout the machine feed information to the PLC about film position, seal temperature, product weight, and dozens of other variables. The system adjusts operations in real-time to maintain consistent quality.
Operators use the touchscreen to set bag length, fill weight, sealing temperature, and production speed. The system then manages the complex timing of feeding, forming, filling, sealing, and cutting automatically.
