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Frequently Asked Questions
For your convenience, we've included a helpful FAQ section on each collection page to address common questions and provide valuable insights.
How To Seal Mylar Bags
Mylar bags are sealed using heat seal machines. For the semi manual Impulse heat sealers, lift the arm, place the top of the bag on the bottom, heated band, close the arm, then heat and pressure from the top and bottom bands seal the bag. For the continuous, semi automatic heat sealer, there are two moving, heated bands that the top of the bag is slid into. The bag is moved along a conveyor belt as the heated bands pressurize the bag and seal it shut, then it pops out the other side!
What Temperature Do I Need To Seal Mylar Bags?
Every heat seal machine is different, and the amount of heat needed varies spending on the material. For Mylar bags, a temperature of around 250°F (120°C) is needed for sealing.
What Is The Best Bag Sealer?
It all depends on the scale of your production! If you’re running a small scale operation, our Impulse heat sealers are a good choice. They’re super affordable and efficient, but they do require lifting the arm up and down in between each bag/round of bags. The continuous horizontal band heat sealer is perfect for larger scale operations as it runs automatically and can seal ~ 30 bags in about one minute.
What Can I Use To Heat Seal Mylar Bags?
You can use any of our three poly bag heat sealer machines to seal your Mylar bags. We carry two sizes of Impulse heat sealers and one semi automatic, continuous band heat sealer.
Heat Sealer
If you’ve ever bought a Mylar bag of weed versus a jar, you probably remember it being somewhat tricky to open. You may have even grabbed a pair of scissors! Don’t get us wrong, jars and other cannabis containers are getting plenty tricky themselves due to compliance regulations. But Mylar bags are often tricky because they’re tamper evident compliant from heat sealing.
Heat sealing is more common than you may realize, but it’s especially common in the food and cannabis industries. However, the food industry was utilizing the Mylar bag sealer - and Mylar bags themselves, for that matter - long before cannabis folks were. Mylar bags are a truly fantastic food packaging material; they’re highly impermeable to air and moisture, which keeps food fresh and protected. Nowadays, it does the same for cannabis products!
Most Mylar bags, for food and weed, are equipped with a zip lock-type resealable feature. When resealed properly, those zippers are pretty effective at making bags airtight. However, not all Mylar bags are equipped with zippers. Either way though, both types of Mylar bag are typically run through a heat sealing machine to both close them and make them tamper evident.
If a Mylar bag is not equipped with a zipper, it has to be heat sealed to close the bag. One exception to this, however, is coffee bags. Coffee bags are made from Mylar but are (generally) not equipped with a zipper or heat sealed. Rather, coffee bags are tightly rolled, perhaps with a bit of glue at the opening, and fitted with bendable tabs that keep the bags shut and semi airtight.
Granola bars, though, are one of those single serving foods whose Mylar wrappers don’t have zippers and must go through a bag sealer. Weed, however, often comes in portions that are not consumed all in one sitting - 8ths, for instance - so those bags do have resealable zippers. Then, they’re heat sealed to add the tamper evident compliance feature.
If you’re packaging your flower, edibles, pre-rolls, or dab syringes in Mylar pouches, there’s no question that you likely need a heat sealer. Most states require tamper evident packaging, and customers appreciate it, as well (even if it can be tricky, it assures them that the product within is safe!). In this article, we’ll talk about our four bag sealing machine options, including our two Impulse sealer machines.
What Is A Heat Sealer?
A heat sealer is a machine that uses heat and pressure to meld the openings of various types of plastic bags and containers - by the way, Mylar is a type of (often) metalized plastic, but we’ll get into that later. There are various types of heat seal equipment, three of which in our collection are Mylar bag sealer machine varieties. We also offer a steam sealing machine meant for applying shrink labels to joint tubes!
Mylar packaging equipment is actually incredibly easy to use and makes a huge difference in complying with tamper evident requirements. Heat seal packaging works by fusing the two sides of the open end of a bag together so much so that they seem inseparable. In a way, they are! People sometimes have to use scissors to get those heat sealed bags open - proof that they’re protective!
Once a heat sealed bag is opened, it becomes evident that it has been tampered with - get it? If you see a bag of, say, almonds at the store and the top is torn, you’re not going to buy it, right? Nope, and you wouldn’t buy a torn bag of flower or edibles either. But the thing is, some heat sealed bags are slightly easier to open than others.
There are two kinds of heat sealed bags: those with tear notches and those without. Tear notches are exactly what they sound like - teeny tiny cut outs around the edge of the heat sealing that you tear to open the bags. Those without tear notches are often considered one time child resistant in addition to tamper evident without the tear notches making things easier, heat sealed bags can be super tricky.
How Do I Use A Bag Sealer?
Thankfully, all of the bag sealing machine varieties we carry are incredibly easy to use. Some of them, like the small or large Impulse heat sealer, look similar to a paper cutter at first glance. To use that kind of bag sealing tool, you would pull the arm up, place the open ends of one or a few Mylar bags (filled with your cannabis goodies) on the band on the bottom section, then close the arm so the tops of the bags are trapped.
For bags with zippers, only put the part of the bag above the zipper into the Impulse sealer for Mylar bags. For bags without zippers, you have a little more leeway, but you typically only want to put about ½ an inch or less into the thermal bag sealer. This does depend on the size of the bag you're using, of course, and whether or not there are tear notches. If there are tear notches, try to line the bottom of the heat sealing machine band up with the top of the notches.
For the non Impulse heat sealer in our collection, things work slightly differently. The Impulse sealer for Mylar bags is equipped with a timer, but our other Mylar sealing machine is more like a miniature conveyor belt. There are two moving heated belts pressed together with another larger moving belt below and to the side. The top ½ inch or so of the bags are slid into the end of the two pressed-together belts, which begins to sweep it away immediately.
As the bag travels between those heated bands, the bottom of the bag rests on the lower conveyor belt, which helps move everything along. By the time the bag reaches the other end, it’s completely sealed and pops right out into a box or onto the table. These semi automatic Mylar bag sealer machines can seal up to 30 bags in just one minute!
What Types of Mylar Bag Sealers Are Available?
We offer three heated Mylar bag machine types and one steam machine for applying shrink labels to pre roll tubes. Let’s take a closer look at each one:
8” Impulse Heat Sealing Machine
The 8” Impulse heat sealer is the perfect small Mylar sealer. 1, 2, and (most) 3.5 gram Mylar bags would fit in the 8” Impulse bag sealer, which requires no warm up and has an adjustable timer. It can handle up to 6mm thick bags, and seals with a 2mm wide seal. It’s the perfect mini bag sealer!
16” Impulse Sealing Machine
The 16” Impulse heat sealer is a nice step up from the 8” Impulse heat sealer. If you're making all sizes of weed bags, from 1 gram to 28 grams, you’re definitely going to want to get this larger Mylar bag sealing machine. This Impulse sealer for Mylar bags is also equipped with an adjustable timer and can handle 6mm thick bags.
Continuous Horizontal Band Heat Sealing Machine
Our continuous horizontal band Mylar bag sealer is a fan favorite. As we mentioned, this Mylar bag sealing machine can seal up to 30 bags in just one minute! It depends on how fast you’re working and the size of the bags you’re putting through, but in general, this is one ultra-efficient Mylar sealer.
Futurola Venturi Shrink Label Steam Machine
This machine is kind of a heat sealing machine and kind of a steaming heat gun at the same time. It looks a lot like a water bubbler with a wide tube attached to a protruding arm. To use it, you turn it on and wait for the machine to begin producing steam within the tube. Then, place a shrink label around a filled pre roll tube and hold it in place as you move to drop it through the tube.
Once the end of the pre roll tube is within the steaming tube, just let go! The joint tube will fall through the steaming tube, which will shrink the plastic label so that it clings to the joint tube. Be sure to place a box underneath to catch your tubes as they fall, unless you plan on catching each one!
Does My Business Need A Heat Sealing Machine?
If you’re using Mylar pouches as cannabis packaging, you definitely need a Mylar pouch sealing machine. As we mentioned, tamper evidence is one of the most common compliance packaging requirements for cannabis. Using a Mylar bag sealer is pretty much the only effective way to make them tamper evident.
You technically can use little tamper evident labels and place them over the zipper on non-heat sealable bags, but that doesn’t fly in many places. Cannabis commissioners take compliance regulations extremely seriously - they can be the difference between your business’s success or failure. For the best tamper evident Mylar bags, you definitely want to use an industrial bag sealer.
On top of meeting compliance regulations, using a Mylar bag sealing machine gives your flower or edible pouches a clean, professional look. Think of a large bag of almonds at the grocery, or one of those fancy hiking granola bars for a second. They both have refined edges that are very evidently 100% sealed, and it would be apparent if they were opened already. Applying the same principle to your cannabis products, shows your customers that you take their safety, enjoyment, and your brand standards seriously.
Where To Buy A Heat Sealer
The best, most efficient, and most trusted bag sealing machine options are right here at Marijuana Packaging! As we talked about, the packaging sealing machine is a simple contraption that makes a world of difference, both aesthetically and compliance-wise. However, not all Mylar sealer machines are created equal, despite the simplicity of their designs. The ones in our shop, though, are top of the line.
The Impulse pouch sealer machines in our collection have 5-star ratings for their ease of use and high performance - people love them! But get this: both Impulse sealer machines are super affordable - as in, way less expensive than you’re probably thinking. If you run a smaller scale operation, an Impulse bag sealer is perfect for you. The mini bag sealer is best for individual bags, but the larger can do a few at once!
If you’re running a larger scale operation, though, a mini bag sealer just isn’t going to do it. You’re going to want to snag a continuous band heat sealing machine, which can seal up to 30 bags in about one minute! Continuous heat sealing machines are also inexpensive for what they are and do a fantastic, efficient job at sealing bags after bag after bag.
Heat Sealer - The Bottom Line
Heat sealing machines are widely used across numerous industries, and there are many different kinds! The three various kinds that we carry are common in the food and cannabis industries, but there are other kinds that are common in the toy and toiletry industry (think Hot Wheels, toothbrushes, etc.). But here in the cannabis industry, we’re extra grateful for all that heat sealers do.
Not only do they neatly finish off your perfectly designed weed bags, they also help you meet your state’s compliance regulations. Most states will require you to have tamper evident flower, edible, and other products in tamper evident containers. But if your state also requires child resistant cannabis packaging, you can still use some of our Mylar bags!
Our Pinch N Slide, Pinch N Pull, and DymaPak Mylar heat seal bags are all child resistant and tamper evident and come in fully opaque or vista options. If you have your heart set on Mylar bags as your brand’s packaging, we likely have everything you need to meet your state’s regulations and design unique, enticing, awesome packaging. And heat sealers are part of that!