There are two MAC Industrial Heat Sealer battery jar sealing models available, the E-164 and E-157. The E-164 is a servo-driven automatic heat sealer and the E-157 is manually pneumatic driven.
The system seals the battery covers to the battery jars using four independent welding assemblies, one for each side. The side-welding assemblies are pneumatically actuated and electrically heated. To melt the jar and cover surfaces, a Teflon-coated blade is heated to an adjustable temperature of 221°–232° C (400°–450° F.) By using a low temperature a resilient weld in the polypropylene material is achieved. A seal cycle including melt, process, and cooling is normally around 50 seconds per cell. Though the melt and cooling times can be adjusted. The cover welder adjusts for various jar sizes, and uses a modular welding head to minimize downtime. The machine head, front and back guides are adjustable for various jar sizes, and plate quantities respectively.
Each assembly is connected to the machine head by four plugs and four easily accessible screws making changeover time around 3 minutes. Optional control and cell handling features make the welding system adaptable to any size battery. Easy hand-wheels adjust the length and width settings to change sizes and centering is maintained without any operator attention.
The bead forming process is standard and can be toggled on or off. Bead forming reduces the need to trim the excess material away from the weld line and greatly increases the integrity of the weld. Cells processed using bead forming are about 0.5 mm (0.20 in,) local to the weld line. Timers and temperature control are PLC resident. Finally, height adjustments are motor-driven and actuated by push buttons located on the operator console.