The VFS-1000 vertical feeding system is our prized Dartronics, Inc. custom invention! It is the Ultimate Pouch Feeding System to allow printing and labeling downstream, and was engineered just four years ago from the imagination of our President, Ken Darrow. In the short years since its inception, the System has taken the industrial packaging industry by storm! And though the ‘V” in VFS-1000 stands for “vertical,” it could easily stand for “versatility;” because the System’s versatility is unmatched!

Designed to Feed:

• Zippered bags/ Pouches
• Standup Pouches
• Foil Pouches
• Auto bottom
• Cartons
• Coffee Bags,
• Paper Bags,
• Gusseted Bags
• Mylar
• And more!

Click here to see the VFS-100 in action!

We compiled a list of some of our biggest named customers who have purchased our VFS-1000 system over the years, showcasing the different system components and innovative ways they integrated our custom product into their impressive facilities and various industries.

#1 Harris Seeds was our first-ever VFS-1000 sale back in 2018! Harris Seeds has provided the finest quality vegetable seeds, flower seeds, plants, and supplies to growers and gardeners throughout the United States. Since 1879, it has been a trusted seed supplier for commercial and home gardeners who rely on Harris Seeds for high-quality seeds and growing supplies. In 2018, Dartronics, Inc. provided Harris Seeds a Vertical Pick & Place Bag Feeder with a Print & Apply Wipe-On Labeler – Integrated System.

We replaced their existing Print and Apply Labeling System, which was over ten years old, where operators hand-place zippered bags one at a time at the print and apply labeler conveyor. And the existing machinery’s speed was about 30 zippered bags per minute. Fortunately, our Dartronics Vertical Pick and Place System automated their process, and they instantly were able to feed zippered bags at speeds of about 53 bags per minute, almost doubling their productivity and reducing errors.

System Components:

• • • Dartronics, Inc. VFS-1000
    • Altech ALcode Print & Apply Labeler
    • SATO S84-ex
    • Shingling Conveyor for Printed Bags Accumulation

#2 Walton’s Inc. Walton Jerky & Snack Sticks is a family-owned and operated business serving the needs of the independent meat processor for over 30 years. They offer a wide variety of products and services, including on-site expertise and high-quality products.

Dartronics, Inc. provided Walton’s with a VFS-1000, TTO Printer & Shingling Conveyor system. Specifically, we offered a feeding & printing system for their vacuum pouches to help with their daily production volumes, which were about 10k to 20k pouches daily. With the VFS-1000 able to feed up to 60 pouches a minute, our system was the perfect solution to keep and speed up Walton’s production rates!

System Components:

• • • Dartronics, Inc. VFS-1000
    • FlexPackPro 420C: Continuous Thermal Transfer Overprinter
    • FPP Powered Printing Conveyor
    • Powered Shingling Conveyor

#3 Jonathan Green has been a leading supplier of grass seed, soil enhancers, fertilizer, and organic lawn and garden products since  1881—a family business with a turfgrass research farm where we study and grow top-performing grass seed varieties. In addition to grass seed, they offer everything from soil foods that correct pH and relieve compaction to weed controls, fertilizers, and organics.

Back in 2019, Jonathan Green purchased a Dartronics Inc. VFS-1000 system. Our talented team of engineers assembled a VFS-1000 & TTO printer & Shingling Conveyor System to feed and print on their large premade bags with a gusseted bottom and top open. Large or small, our VFS-1000’s adjustable in-feed conveyor can feed any sized bag!

System Components:

• • • Dartronics, Inc. VFS-1000
    • FlexPackPro 420C: Continuous Thermal Transfer Overprinter
    • Powered Printing Conveyor for TTO Printer
    • Powered Shingling Conveyor

#4 QIAGEN’s journey began in the mid-1980s, in the early days of biotechnology–as a spin-off of university research. Today, the company has grown to 6,000 employees, based in more than 25 countries, providing expertise and service to customers nearly everywhere and serving more than 500,000 customers around the globe, all seeking answers from the building blocks of life – DNA, RNA, and proteins.

QIAGEN purchased a Dartronics Inc. VFS-1000 system with an Apply Only Labeling System. Our team provided an integrated system to feed and apply a pre-printed label for various sizes of premade zippered bags. The speeds required were about 24 bags/minute or faster, which was no problem for our VFS-1000, which can feed up to 60 zippered bags per minute.

System Components:mfs-4000, M

• • • Dartronics, Inc. VFS-1000
    • Altech – ALritma S Label Head – Apply Only Labeling System

#5 Good Day Farm is a leading cannabis company in the South. Founded in 2020, Good Day Farm is the largest licensed medical cannabis producer in the South, supplying the region with an abundant selection of cannabis products in a diverse range of formats, including premium flower, edibles, vapes, concentrates, tinctures, and topical creams; with state-of-the-art grow operations and cutting-edge R&D facilities across Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Mississippi. It is best known as “the #1 medical dispensary in the south!” and has a 130,000-square-foot facility.

Good Day Farm purchased our Dartronics Inc. VFS-1000 system with a Print and Apply Labeling System. We orchestrated a system for them to print and apply labels onto one side of an assortment of pouches and cartons. We also upgraded Good Day Farm’s process of printing labels only using a desktop label printer and label design software by adding the highly integrative automation capabilities of the VFS-1000 to speed up their process for printing larger batches of labels while also helping to avoid human errors and stay compliant with the label format of the printed government labels. 

System Components:

• • • Dartronics, Inc. VFS-1000
    • MFS-4000 Manual Feeding System
    • Altech – ALritma S Label Head – Apply Only Batch Labeling System
    • Powered Shingling Conveyor

So, who’s buying our VFS-1000?

The answer is, who isn’t buying it? Our vertical feeding system has already become a staple in some of the largest companies in the Agricultural industry, Biotechnology industry, the Cannabis industry, the Electronics industry, the Food & Beverage industry, the Manufacturing industry, the Product Packaging industry, and more! So you can contact us today for more info on our VFS-1000 system, and our talented Dartronics team can show you how our custom system can speed up productivity, eliminate errors, and improve your ROI. 

Take A Free Evaluation!. Email us at Sales@dartronics.com or Call Dartronics at +1 (800) 298-8936  for more info.

The post Who’s Buying Our VFS-1000 Vertical Feeding System? appeared first on Dartronics.

What is the VFS-1000?

HSAUSA’s VFS-1000 is a Vertical Feeding System that is perfect for feeding paper shopping bags. If you are trying to inkjet or label shopping bags, this is the feeding system for you! Feeding paper, plastic, or colored bags, this machine can feed them all. The handles on the shopping bags are not a problem.

The system also allows for pouch labeling where stand-up pouches and bags are stood on the edge, pick and placed onto a shuttle table, then pushed onto the downstream conveyor for printing or pouch labeling. The VFS-1000 can run up to 60 pouches or bags per minute, depending on the size of pouches and bags. Pouches and bags are aligned as they are pushed onto the receiving conveyor.

Watch the VFS-1000 Handle Paper Bags:

Additional Features Include:

• Stand Alone Machine to Pick and Place Pouches/Zippered Bags standing on the edge for downstream printing and labeling
• Up to 60 Pouches/Zippered bags per minute
• Adjustable in-feed conveyor feeds on demand
• PLC controlled
• Recipes for different product setup
• Integrated with Printers and Labelers
• Variable speed adjustment, and more!

If you are one of the millions of US businesses that use paper bags (or any bags for that matter), Dartronics can help with all your packaging and labeling needs. We stand on the shoulders of great inventors like William Goodale with inventions like our VFS-1000 designed to integrate and automate traditional packaging and labeling methods.

Before the paper bag, baskets, bowls, and other bulky containers were the main storage solution in every home and store, so creating a convenient container was revolutionary. Happy Paper Bag Day!

For more info on the VFS-1000 contact us at sales@dartronics.com or call us at 732-324-0800 

The post How the VFS-1000 Handles Paper Bag Day appeared first on Dartronics.

“If you build it, they will come” is more than just a movie slogan to us at Dartronics. Our talented team of engineers jumps at any chance to come up with creative solutions that save our clients both money and time! And because we partner with top of the line vendors, our customizations don’t always have to be created from scratch. Below are three examples of personalized projects we completed for customers who needed a little something extra to optimize their packaging lines:

#1 VFS-1000 Vertical Feeding System, Feeding Shopping Bags:

This VFS-1000 System (Vertical Feeding System) video shows us feeding shopping bags on a system that traditionally run bags from right to left. Based on a customer’s request, we build a machine that can run bags from left to right. The bags are being fed from a hopper onto the customer’s existing printing system conveyor. And because the customer was located in another state, all interactions took place remotely via phone and email. After we built the system in-house, we shipped it over to the customer, and they were able to install it themselves. The system is simple, cost-effective, delivered quickly, and easy to integrate. 

If it were not for our system, the customer would have had to purchase both a robot and conveyorized feeding system, which would have been more expensive. This project saved the customer time and money with an added bonus of also reducing their company’s carbon footprint. 

 The VFS-1000 Vertical Feeding System is perfect for feeding shopping bags with or without handles. If you are trying to inkjet print or label shopping bags, this is the feeding system for you. Feeding paper, plastic, or colored bags, this machine can feed them all. The handles on the shopping bags are not a problem. 

#2 Dartronics Box Tilt and Label System:

This video shows our unique and compact system to tilt, label, and print heavy 25 – 50 lbs bags: Bag in a Box style package. Dartronics provided a custom solution to flip cases 90 degrees in-line on a roller conveyor. The Paragon Labeler prints and applies labels to the trailing panel. Further downstream is a DartJet inkjet printer to print on the top of the box. 

All the components used to build the system are standard industry-wide, easily available components. We prefer to keep the system design simple and serviceability in mind, so the end-user does not incur any downtime at all. By sourcing standard components, we built the system very quickly! The tilt mechanism is air powered and gradually tilts the heavy cases without causing any cosmetic damages to the package. 

The print and apply labeler used in the system runs the customers existing label design software and eliminates the need to print labels offline – we are printing and applying on the fly! 

#3 Adco Compact 4, AlTech ALcode Labeler and Dartronics Integration System:

This system was a custom project created to allow one operator to increase the number of cartons they can load during a shift. Before our improvement, the customers’ operators were manually erecting the carton and tucking all the minor and major flaps closed with their fingers; that kind of repetitive work could lead to ergonomic issues. The system in the video is a single operator station where all the operator has to do is to insert the product into the carton erected by the system. The vertical cartoner tucks the flaps closed and discharges them out from the machine into a print, and apply a labeling system wherein a single pass. We apply two labels to the carton on the fly. 

The system is versatile and accommodates different carton sizes with easy changeovers. At the discharge end of the system, we could integrate a robot to case pack the cartons if needed by a customer. 

For more info on the above projects, or if you have one in mind, contact us today! Our expert team is here to help make your line simpler to operate, with faster speeds that will increase your ROI. 

Take A Free Evaluation!. Email us at Sales@dartronics.com or Call Dartronics at +1 (800) 298-8936  for more info.

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