Introduction
At a Glance
Most common faults on case erectors and sealers can be traced to a small number of root causes that operators can clear without a service call.
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Erector
- Top 3 faults (Rack Open Servo Fault, Setup Missed 3 Blanks, Lost Case at Handoff) all trace to one thing: the magazine window is too tight for today’s pallet of cardboard. The fix is a minor recipe adjustment.
- Cardboard variation is the most common reason a recipe that ran clean last week is faulting this week. Building recipes against the average of the pallet (not the first blank you pull) prevents most of these faults.
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Sealer
- Tape and registration faults are quick to fix mechanically but easy to miss because the sealer sits at the back of the line. Detection capability matters as much as the fix itself.
- Glue sealers experience blocked-nozzle faults, with the same recovery logic as tape break faults. Open-flap detection is the option that catches this subtle failure mode.
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Operator Training
- When turnover walks knowledge out the door, service visits become training sessions by default. Onboarding is the place to absorb that cost.
The fault names in this article (Rack Open Servo Fault, Setup Missed 3 Blanks, Lost Case at Handoff, Broken Uncut Tape, and Registration Photo Eye Stall) are the names used on HMI screens for INSITE case erectors and sealers. While the diagnostic patterns are general, the ideal recovery method depends on the machine having recipes the operator can adjust without requesting help from a specialist.
In this article, we’ll cover:
- The top three case erector faults
- Why cardboard variation makes a recipe that ran yesterday fault today
- The two common sealer faults
- How a glue sealer changes the fault names but not the underlying logic
- Why operator training is the lever that determines whether faults stay routine or become outages
Top Three Erector Faults, One Root Cause
The erector keeps a stack of flat cardboard blanks in a magazine, holding them upright in a slot like oversized cards in a deck. To make a box, the machine reaches in, grabs a blank, and pulls it out through a narrow opening.
That opening has to be sized just right. If it’s too tight, the blank can’t come out cleanly. Sometimes the blank barely moves, sometimes it gets halfway out, and sometimes it comes out just enough to grip but not enough to ride the belts properly. The machine doesn’t know the cause of the fault (that the opening is too tight); it just knows something went wrong, and it reports the location of the jam.
That’s why three different fault names point at the same physical problem:
- Rack Open Servo Fault → The blank jams on the way out and blocks the arm that opens it.
- Setup Missed 3 Blanks → The machine tries to grab a blank and can’t get hold of it. It tries again, and after three failed attempts, it stops.
- Lost Case at Handoff → The blank comes out crooked or barely attached and falls off the belt before the downstream sensors see it.
These three faults all stem from the same root cause—the opening to draw out the blanks is a little too tight.
How to Fix the Issues on INSITE Equipment
In most cases, these three steps resolve the faults’ root cause:
- Check adjustments 3 and 4
- Open the window slightly
- Save the recipe and resume operation
The logic behind this simple fix is twofold. First, the INSITE case erector is fully servo driven, which gives the machine the reliability and repeatability needed for an operator’s recipe edit to hold from run to run. Second, the recipe model itself lets the operator save the new window setting and have the machine recall it automatically the next time that case size runs. This enables the fix to be a minor recipe adjustment vs a service ticket.
Tape Sealer Faults: Quick to Fix, Hard to Discover
The sealer is one of the last machines on the line. Operators tend to be positioned toward the front, where product is being filled, labeled, and accumulated. When the sealer faults, it may not get eyes on it for several minutes, and this delay can compound whatever the original fault was.
It’s important to keep this in mind when facing the two common sealer fault types. Because while the fix itself is small, the cost of not noticing is what eats throughput.
Broken Uncut Tape Fault
Think of the tape head like a spool of tape feeding through a series of rollers on its way to the box. One of those rollers is adjustable, controlling how much resistance the tape feeds against. Too much resistance causes the tape to snap instead of feed, and this results in the broken uncut tape fault.
You can typically trace the issue to two root causes:
- Tape roller is set too tight → Someone tightened the tape roller while troubleshooting a separate issue and left the tension too tight
- Tape quality is too thin or too low → A thinner or lower-quality tape will break more easily under a given tension than a thicker, higher-quality tape. This means the same roller setting that runs clean on one tape stock can snap a thinner stock very quickly.
How to Fix the Issue (On INSITE and Other Models)
These steps can take just thirty seconds. When tape keeps breaking, check the tension roller first, then check what tape is loaded:
- Back off the roller until the tape feeds freely
- If the line recently switched tape stocks, expect to re-tune the tension for the new tape
As of now, there isn’t a fully standardized tape-tension procedure across all sealer models. Operators learn the right feel from training and field experience, and at INSITE we’re working on documented guidance to replace tribal knowledge. Until that’s in place, the back-off-until-it-feeds-freely heuristic is the working standard.
What matters as much as the fix is the detection. Not all sealers catch a tape break. Simpler machines keep running, which means unsealed boxes keep moving downstream until someone physically notices a box without a sealed lid. On a fast line, that could be a lot of boxes. INSITE sealers detect the break immediately and halt the machine, so the fault gets caught at the source, not discovered at the end of a shift.
Registration Photo Eye Stall Fault
At the entry point of the sealer’s belt conveyor, there’s a registration photo eye, which is a sensor that detects each incoming case and triggers the sealing sequence. If a case comes to rest in front of that sensor and sits there too long, the machine concludes something is jammed and stops.
How to Fix the Issue (On INSITE and Other Models)
Clearing the fault takes about a minute:
- Move the stalled case
- Acknowledge the fault on the Human Machine Interface (HMI)
- Restart
Not catching this fault quickly is what presents the most risk. With operators stationed at the front of the line and the sealer at the back, this fault routinely sits for longer than a minute before someone notices. If you’re running at surge speeds, this fault gets more likely precisely when every minute of downtime costs the most. Visibility tooling, such as the stack light and horn options on the HMI, exists for this reason.
Glue Sealer: Same Logic, Different Fault Names
Glue sealers can present different faults than tape sealers while sharing the same steps to recovery. Instead of tape breaks, you get a blocked nozzle fault when a case gets stuck in the glue zone.
How to Fix the Issue (On INSITE and Other Models)
Although the fault is different, a glue sealer shares the same recovery steps as a registration photo eye stall:
- Clear the jammed case
- Acknowledge the fault on the HMI
- Restart
The risk that doesn’t announce itself is a glue bond that fails quietly after the compression section. A flap lifts, the case keeps moving, and nobody knows until someone downstream opens a box.
The open flap detection option helps mitigate the risk by catching the issue immediately. This involves a sensor positioned after compression that faults the line the moment a flap (that should have been pressed shut) leaves the compression zone and pops back up. On a glue sealer, this detection capability can be the difference between catching a fault at the machine and catching it on a customer complaint.
Empower Your Operators and Reduce Field Service Calls
None of the faults listed above require a technician. You can resolve these faults yourself when you know what the fault name means and where to look for the root cause.
The HMI handles the first part by displaying a fault banner, a visual schematic with a dot marking the fault location (and an optional stack light and horn for immediate floor-level alerts). The second part involves operator training.
High turnover is common in packaging facilities and, unfortunately, knowledge walks out with every operator who leaves. Field service technicians often arrive on site expecting a repair and end up running a training session for whoever is newest on the floor—even at facilities running the same machines they bought many years prior.
Instead of investing in field service visits, which can become partly billable training time, you can utilize what this article just covered. Build this knowledge into onboarding so it can be applied proactively rather than transferred reactively, and faults can be handled quickly and effectively by your operators.
Struggling to Correct Erector & Sealer Faults?
Give us a call. INSITE’s team of specialists are here to help pinpoint the issues and find their solutions.
