How to make blister tray insert for your products?
Tray insert is the plastic blister with specific cavity, it can hold and protect your products. Usually, the blister tray match with the box packaging. Blister tray insert can be big or small which depends on your needs, we accept custom products.
The following are the advantages and disadvantages for blister tray insert:
- The blister can pack and protect the inside products well. You don’t need to add any buffer material when shipping the products. The box with blister tray is enough to protect the inside products during transportation.
- Trays can pack any special-shaped products, the packaged products is transparent and visible, beautiful appearance, easy to sell.
- Blisters are suitable for mechanization, automatic packaging, convenient for modern management.
- At the same time, blister can save labor cost and improving efficiency.
Plastic blister tray is a kind of special packaging and supports the personality design, so it was used widely. Normally, it match with the paper or plastic box. It was used for electronic products such as earphone, cable and lights, cosmetic products such as makeup sponge and makeup brushes, food packaging such as macaron and service plate.
No matter how to use the plastic trays to pack your products, there have a common way for production. The article will show you how to make the blister tray inserts.
Vacuum Forming & Machine
The first thing is to know the blister forming principle —- Vacuum forming technology.
It is a kind of thermal processing method, the thermoplastic sheet is cut into a certain size, after heating and softening the plastic sheet, with the help of the two sides of the sheet atmospheric air pressure difference and mechanical pressure to make the sheet deformation, and then cover on the surface of specific mould. After cooling deformation, and trimming to complete the process of plastic blister tray.
There have 2 kinds of main blister packing thermoforming machines, the one is negative pressure blister thermoforming machine, through the way of negative pressure of air to achieve vacuum, so that the plastic sheet attached to the blister mould.
And the other one is positive and negative pressure thermoforming machine, through the way of pressure and vacuum, then form a strong pressure difference on both sides of the plastic sheet, so as to soften the plastic sheet forming.
According to the blister inner tray forming way, the common blister packing machines is the negative pressure machine.
Technique of Vacuum forming
To produce a good quality blister packaging, there need to pay special attention to the two points: blister forming mould and processing technology.
Mould Styles of Blister Tray
The mould plays a very important role in the quality of the blister products. Usually, there have the plaster mould, cooper mould and hardware mold for blister forming molds.
Plaster mould is easy to make, making time is also short ( about 2-4 days). It is conducive to modification of product packaging. Compared with another molds, its cost is lowest. Due to the original color of plaster mould, the transparency of blister made by plaster mould is less than the blister transparency made by other mould. So it mainly applicable to the sample confirmation and low requirements of product packaging transparency.
Copper mould is metal molds made on the basis of plaster molds, which are relatively durable. The thickness of blister cooper mold is about 0.5-0.8mm, and the making time is about 5 days ( including the plaster mould making time). The surface of copper mould is smooth, so the appearance and transparency of the blister produced are good. Also, its mold cost is relatively low, so that it is the most commonly used blister tray insert forming mold.
Aluminum mould needs to be based on 3D design or product sample, through CAM and other programming software programs, completed by CNC machine tool processing The precision of aluminum mold is very high, the contour and Angle of the blister packagings produced are relatively beautiful. Relative to the other two molds, its price is the highest, but its durability and production efficiency are higher, time saving and electricity saving, and the rejection rate is very low. This mold is suitable for packaging with high appearance and size requirements. It is the first choice for mass production and high requirements of blister production.
Processing Technology
During the blister tray packaging production, we need to notice some key points.
The first point is the blister mould release. There must to have a certain inclination on mould sides, and the demoulding incline is generally 0.5 – 1 degree, so that the blister packaging can fast to release on the mould.
The second point is to have enough gas vents, and then it can quickly remove the remaining gas between the plastic sheet and forming molds. To ensure that the plastic sheet after heating and softening, there have enough vacuum suction to make the plastic sheet completely affixed on the surface of the mold. On the other hand, it is necessary to keep the exhaust hole, exhaust groove and other channel system unobstructed to avoid the vacuum reduction by foreign body blockage, resulting in the blister tray forming incompletely.
The 4 main Materials for Blister Tray Insert
For the material of blister tray packaging, there have 3 kinds of main materials that can be chosen:
PVC Clear Blister Tray Material
PVC is the most common material for plastic blister tray. And PVC blister tray can be clear tray or frosty tray. The hardness and toughness is good but the biodegrade level of PVC is not good. While PVC blister tray is not eco-friendly material tray.
because of the price and hardness, most of the clients choose to do plastic PVC blister tray insert. Yes, the price of PVC is cheaper than other materials.
Food-Grade PET & PP Blister Tray Material
PET/PP blister tray is also used by the clients. PET/PP is eco-friendly material and food-grade material. If you have strict requirements for environmental protection, you can consider PET/PP blister packaging tray. And PET is high-clear material and it has good anti-fouling property. PET/PP blister plastic tray is very popular for the country that are focus on environmental protection. Because PET/PP is food-grade material, it can touch food directly and used for many food products such as cookie, macaron and chocolate.
PS Material
PS material is one kind of material that for plastic blister tray insert packaging. I can tell you that PS material won’t have static problem, so it is very suitable for the products that requires avoid static problem. And PS blister tray can touch the food directly. Therefore, you can see the white dinner plate in dinner hall or restaurant, that is PS blister tray.
The 4 Kinds of Different Styles for Blister Insert
According to the different appearance between blisters, we divide the blister into 3 styles:
Normal Blister Tray
The gloss or matte surface of the blisters that you can see is the normal blister. The normal blister tray can be transparent, frosty or white color.
Flocking Blister Tray
The surface of blister tray insert was covered with a layer fluff. The fluff touches good, we have different level for the fluff which based on your budget. Usually the flocking blister tray would be put inside the high-grade gift box. So flocking blister tray can make the inside gift products looks high-grade and more beautiful.
Special Material Blister Tray
We called the colorful material is special material, such as red, yellow, blue and so on. If you want the blister more attractive or colorful to match with the box, you can choose to do the special blister tray. The special blister tray also can be the flocking blister tray, the color of fluff also can be the color of the material.
Position Blister Tray Insert
We also can do printing on the blister tray, but it is silk-screen printing. We called this kind of blister tray packaging is position blister, please see the following pictures.
The Application of Blister Tray
Since products come in all shapes and sizes, it’s not uncommon that trays or other inserts need to be designed and manufactured to make a package more functional.
The blister insert will pack the product and then put into packaging box. Normally, the blister insert will pack such as food(chocolate, cake, fruit, vegetables), cosmetics(cosmetics bottle, brushes, false eyelashes), electronic products(charges, earphone, cables) and so on.
Examples of Blister Tray Packaging
Blister insert for food
Tray insert for USB cable
Blister insert for cosmetics brushes
How to Design Thermoform Blister Tray
There have a saying goes, professional work need to be done by professional people. We are professional packaging supplier in the field for over 10 years with our own factory.
If you have no idea about the blister packaging that pack your products, you can show us what your product is and tell us your target market. We will give you several suggestions according to your traget price, then you can choose the packaging scheme that you want. We can suggest the size, material and printing based on your products.
Any project for packaging, don’t hesitate to contact us.
