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Major High Street Brands Tighten Up With Capstar

July 2001
Toiletries and skin care products sold under many high street stores’ own labels are produced by manufacturer - Dewhirst Toiletries. They rely on Crane Electronics’ CapStar closure torque testers to ensure that the caps on all products are tightened correctly prior to despatch.
Dewhirst Toiletries, based in Sandy, Bedfordshire, manufactures a complete range of shampoos, conditioners, bath oils, skin care products and face and body creams, mostly sold as high street own brands.

Supplying such a large range of products means that containers of many different shapes and sizes are used, with screw-on closures having different recommended torque settings that need to be adhered to. If the cap is not tightened sufficiently, the product will leak; too tight and it will be difficult for the customer to remove it, or the container could be damaged.

The Crane CapStar is able to accommodate bottles and jars of irregular shapes from 10mm to 130mm diameter. Opening or closing torque up to 6Nm can be quickly and easily tested, an instant reading being given by the digital display. Data can be stored in the internal memory and downloaded to a computer or printer.

During the manufacturing process at Dewhirst Toiletries, a minimum of four samples from each production line are taken every hour and are tested to ensure the correct tightening torque has been applied to the closures. Five CapStar machines are used by the company to cover inspection of output from all the lines. Each CapStar is able to test any shape container without the need for special fixtures, so that no torque tester is tied to a particular product line.

Quality Assurance Executive at Dewhirst Toiletries is Ms. Carol Southgate, who was responsible for purchasing the Crane equipment. Ms. Southgate commented, “I had used Crane torque meters in the past when I was employed at another major cosmetics manufacturer, so I knew how reliable and easy to use after trialing one machine they were. At Dewhirst we soon realised how much better the CapStar was compared to the old non-digital machines we had been using, so we went on to buy four new machines from Crane. They are very easy to use and allow us to print out the results if required, something we couldn’t do with the mechanical instruments.”