Capstars Check Personal Care Products Caps

March 2001
Elida Faberge, the UK's largest manufacturer of personal care products, makes many well-known brands of toiletries and deodorants including Dove, Lynx, Impulse and Salon Selectives. The products are packaged in a wide range of containers of differing shapes and sizes, all needing to be correctly tightened before despatch. In order to facilitate this requirement, Crane Electronics’ digital CapStar closure torque testers are used by the company to regularly check samples of each product.

The CapStar, developed in response to demand from the food, drink and pharmaceutical industries for a low cost, versatile and easy to use instrument, features an LCD digital readout to clearly display the peak torque of each test and is available in 2Nm, 4Nm and 6Nm versions. Bottles and jars from 10mm to 130mm diameter as well as irregular shaped containers and child resistant closures can all be accommodated.

“The CapStar is a very well thought-out piece of equipment,”� says Mark Armitage, Calibration Controller at Elida Faberge. “There were a lot of drawbacks with the old mechanical torque testers we used to have. The CapStar machines offer very good value for money, they calibrate well, and being robust and easily portable they can be carried to anywhere we need them. The reliability is outstanding. In fact, I would say they are one of the very few pieces of equipment that we have that never give us any problems with calibration.”�

Elida Faberge, in common with many industries, needs container caps to be tight enough to create an effective seal during transit without being overtight, which could lead to distortion problems and make removal difficult for the customer. Using the CapStar is a very simple operation, the container to be tested is clamped on the turntable and the cap turned to undo it, whereupon the instrument displays the peak torque exerted, with no changes to tooling or settings required for different closures.