Poly Bagger — machine setup & label printing.

Required air supply

Compressor startup sequence

1. Drain the tank — open the compressor drain valve until water stops flowing, then close it
2. Close the ball valve — make sure the ball valve on the compressor outlet is closed before starting the compressor
3. Connect the air hose — attach to the T-1000 quick-disconnect on the rear panel; listen for the coupling to seat. Do this before starting the compressor while it is easier to connect
4. Start the compressor — with the ball valve still closed, start the compressor and let it build pressure
5. Open the ball valve — once the compressor has built pressure, open the ball valve on the compressor outlet
6. Set the regulator — adjust to 50 PSI at the compressor side
7. Verify pressure — check the T-1000 gauge reads 50 PSI before starting production
8. Check the water separator / air catch — drain any accumulated moisture from the filter bowl or air catch

Daily compressor checks

Summer water buildup & clogged drain

In warm, humid weather (worst in summer) the tank collects water fast, and debris + sludge can clog the drain valve so it stops draining even with water still inside. This is a known issue on this compressor — here is the recovery that works:

If pressure-blowout stops working (the clog returns sooner each time), the tank sludge has built up past what flushing clears — the drain valve or petcock needs to be removed and cleaned, or the tank professionally flushed.

From startup to your first cycle

Follow these screens on our bagger. Complete the machine startup checklist, including the air-pressure and guard checks, before enabling a cycle. Use the approved job settings; the values pictured are examples. Select any image to enlarge it.

1. 1. Startup → Operation

   After the machine powers on, the Startup screen appears. Select Operation to open the local operation screen shown in the next step.

   

2. 2. Operation → Main Menu

   On the local Operation screen, select Main Menu in the bottom-right corner.

   

3. 3. Main Menu → Bagger Settings

   On the local Main Menu, select Bagger Settings, the middle button in the top row of yellow menu buttons.

   

4. 4. Bagger Settings — wait for Ready

   The local Bagger Settings screen opens. Confirm the approved settings, then halt here until Wait changes to Ready. The bagger indicator is at the upper left, beside Stop. Do not confuse it with the printer’s separate Ready indicator on the Operation screen.

   

5. 5. Select Stop to enable the machine

   Once the bagger shows Ready, select the red Stop button immediately to the right of the Ready/Wait indicator. This toggles the machine from Stop to Start, enabling it to cycle.

6. 6. Press Manual Cycle to engage

   With the operating area clear, press the green Manual Cycle button at the upper right to engage one cycle. Check the first bag’s seal and length before continuing production.

Manufacturer control reference — Operation, Main Menu, Start/Stop, Ready/Waiting, and Bagger Settings (printed page 28).

Change bag & film roll

When to change the film roll

• Film core becomes visible on the unwind spindle
• Switching to a different film width or gauge
• Film is creased, torn, or misfeeding
• Seal quality degrades on a nearly-empty roll

Changeover steps

1. Stop the machine — complete the pending cycle, then press E-stop
2. Open the film guard — release the latch and lift the guard
3. Remove the empty core — slide it off the unwind spindle and discard
4. Load the new roll — slide it onto the unwind spindle, matching the film direction shown in the threading diagram inside the guard
5. Thread the film — route film through the rollers exactly per the diagram; keep tension even and avoid wrinkles
6. Close the film guard — ensure it seats fully before running
7. Test cycle — run one test bag, verify seal quality and bag length, then resume production

After every changeover

• Re-bag any products bagged during the transition (see Rebagging procedure)
• Confirm the label prints upright and on-center on the first new bag
• Log the roll change and film type in the production log

Weekly deeper closeout

• Inspect the film path for debris, dust, or stray film fragments
• Check the water separator filter for buildup and replace if needed
• Verify the compressor intake filter is clean
• Wipe down the control panel and counter display

Printer connection (one-time Mac setup)

These steps only need to be done once per Mac workstation:

Connect the Zebra printer

Connect the Zebra ZTC 110Xi4-203dpi printer via USB-B to USB-A cable (or USB-C adapter). The port is on the back of the printer.

Create CUPS print queue

Register the printer queue on macOS:

Verify detection

Install dependencies

The Python label script requires Pillow for image processing:

One-step label printing

From the poly-bagger/ directory, run print_label.py to extract the image, generate ZPL, and print in one command:

If the label prints upside down, add --rotate 180:

Script options

Manual workflow

If you need to inspect or modify the intermediate files:

1. Extract image from .docx: python3 -c "..."
2. Rotate if needed: python3 -c "Image.open(...).rotate(180).save(...)"
3. Generate ZPL: encode 1-bit image as ^GFA hex
4. Send to printer: lp -d Zebra -o raw label.zpl
5. Verify queue: lpq -P Zebra

Printer queue commands

Scale & label dimensions

Save & restore the label on the printer (survives power-off)

The label lives in the Zebra printer's flash memory, not the bagger. Save it once. After any power outage or printer reboot, recall it with one command — verified working after a full Zebra power cut (Sept 2026).

Save the label to flash (one time)

That file starts with ^DFE:CCSBLACK.ZPL. E: = flash memory, survives power-off. R: = RAM, wiped on reboot — never store to R.

Restore / recall (after any power cycle, or anytime)

Starts with ^XFE:CCSBLACK.ZPL — recalls the stored label and prints it. If the printer has been fully powered off, just run this again and confirm a clean label prints.

Manufacturer documentation: Printer manual (Ti-1000Z family) — “Stored Labels” section, p. 22 (recall by Label # 001–999, Clear Labels, label Length isn't saved with a download — set it per label). Step-by-step APPI Help Docs with screenshots: HT000011 — Load Stored Labels (bagger screen) · HT000155 — Store labels from a PC (.ZPL send) · HT000154 — Print labels (daily flow). The bagger manual (v8a/v9 §3.31, §3.42) says it outright: bagger settings save on the PLC/USB — labels live in the printer and are managed from a PC with printer software.

Core machine operations

Label & printer operations

Troubleshooting & quality

Film roll loading reference

The manufacturer's own tutorial for loading and threading a roll of bags onto a T-1000 lives on Vimeo (Advanced Poly-Packaging's channel), but it is set to play only on advancedpoly.com — the embed shows “Sorry” everywhere else, so it can't be placed on this page.

How to thread a roll of bags onto a T-1000 with ZT printer → (opens on Vimeo; may show a domain restriction message there too)

Our own rebagging video is embedded at the top of this section. Written changeover steps live in Change bag & film roll.

When to re-bag

Step-by-step re-bagging

1. Inspect the product — ensure it isn't damaged and still meets QC criteria
2. Remove old bag — cut or tear open the original bag; discard it
3. Verify the label — confirm the existing label is correct and legible, or print a new one
4. Place product in new bag — align the product so the label faces outward and is readable
5. Position the label — ensure the barcode is not wrinkled, folded, or obscured
6. Seal the bag — run through the T-1000 sealer or use a hand sealer if doing a single bag
7. Verify the seal — tug test on both ends of the seal; no gaps
8. QC check — confirm the barcode scans, label is upright, bag is clean

Label reuse rules

1. If the original label is undamaged and still adhered, it can be reused on the new bag
2. If the label lifted or is creased, print a fresh label using print_label.py
3. Never hand-write a replacement barcode — always print from the .docx source
4. Re-bagged items must be logged in the rework log (form REWORK-001)

Placement variance: root causes & fixes

Padding values reference

All adjustments are in dots at 203 DPI. Modify these in print_label.py (inside generate_zpl()):

Mac-specific orientation setup

On macOS, the printer driver and CUPS filters can interfere with raw ZPL passthrough. This setup ensures correct orientation:

1. Create the print queue with lpadmin as shown above — use the raw USB URI, do not install a macOS printer driver
2. Always send ZPL with -o raw to bypass macOS rasterization
3. If the label orientation is wrong, fix it in Python with --rotate 180 — never use ZPL orientation commands
4. The print_label.py script handles all of this automatically: raw queue, correct bit ordering, rotation in Python

Seal defect: root causes & fixes

Seal quality check

Before production and after any temperature, pressure, or film change, verify seals with a tug test: grip both sides of the sealed edge and pull firmly. The seal must hold with no separation or pinholes.

Seal temperature reference

Standard setting used on this machine: 380 °F with a 0.3 second seal dwell time.

Is the temperature right — or masking something else?

Our baseline is 380 °F / 0.3 sec, which sits in the manual's normal 360–440 °F band. But temperature is the dial everyone reaches for last-resort — and the manual's own troubleshooting table lists “seal temperature too high” as the cause of sticking bags, melt-through, and film damage. If bags tear at or next to the seal, or stick to the bar and get yanked, suspect the temp is high.

Find your real number with a ladder test (one variable, small steps):

1. Start at the current setting and run 3 test bags; do the tug test on each seal
2. Drop temp by 10–15 °F, wait for the heater to settle, run 3 more, tug test again
3. Keep stepping down until seals start failing the tug test (peels open, gaps, pinholes)
4. Set the machine 10–20 °F above that failure point. That's your film's real number — not 380 out of habit
5. If seals go weak well above where they used to pass, the problem isn't temp — it's pressure, bar cleanliness, or the rubber strip (below)

If temp seems to need to be high, check what it's compensating for — in order:

• Air pressure below 50 PSI at the machine (weak, partial seals; our compressor water/drain issues live here)
• Seal time too short for the film thickness (manual @400 °F: 0.3 s for 1.5 mil, 0.4 s for 2–3 mil, 0.7 s for 4 mil — time and temp trade against each other)
• Dirty sealing bar / contaminated rubber strip on the pressure bar (clean with alcohol once cool)
• Worn PTFE sheet (folded over, scored, at end of roll — bag sticks, seals go inconsistent)
• Temperature drifting out of range (lots of Waiting pauses: thermocouple or heater cartridge on the way out — raising the setpoint hides it, badly)

Waiting pauses & measuring real drift

The manual does not publish the temperature tolerance — the band is set in the PLC program. What it does say: the machine shows Waiting (flashing) and pauses operation whenever the bar is out of range, and in Auto + Start an idle machine will pause and resume all by itself as temp drifts — every resume is a cycle (nip engagement, audible clunk). So temperature drift and “random activations” can be the same event.

Measure the real offset (Tech Assist, passcode 1001 by default): Main Menu → Technical Assistance → Bagger Factory → Temp Calib (yellow button, right side). The screen shows the bar's current reading; compare it to a known-good external probe on the bar and enter the variance in the Adjustment field so the Read Out reflects reality.

Check TempRange on the same screen — this is the answer to “how far out of range before the machine Waits”: the acceptable band is setpoint ± TempRange (360°F + range 20° = Ready anywhere in 350–370°; outside → Waiting). Manual's suggested setting is 20°. If yours is much wider, someone widened it to silence Waiting while the real fault (thermocouple/cartridge) grew — restore 20° and fix the part. If it's much narrower, an aging heater Waits constantly. Note the current value before changing anything.

Also in Bagger Factory, two settings that matter for the 24/7 habit: Heat Off (minutes of inactivity before the heater bar auto-turns-off — set ~20–30 so an idling machine stops heating overnight) and Blower OFF (air-knife auto-off, typical 3–5 min).

PLC IO Status (same Tech Assist menu) shows two counters that can't be reset: Hours (total powered-on time — proof of the 24/7 habit) and Cycles (total cycles — the maintenance charts are per 1M cycles, so log it). Every other Tech Assist item (APPI Factory, Scale Factory, Option Passcode, License Status) is factory/tech territory — look, don't touch.

Next time Waiting flashes: write down the displayed temperature. If it sits 10–20°F under setpoint for a long stretch, that's an undershooting heater (cartridge aging), not normal regulation.

What's actually happening

The two rollers past the load table that press together are the drive (nip) roller pair: one is motor-driven (the “active” roller timed to the machine), the other is its partner that clamps against it to grip the film. That engagement is normal — every index pulls the web through them.

The bag roll itself sits on a shaft wrapped by a brake strap under the dancer bar. That strap is the machine's only tension control. If it grips instead of slipping smoothly, the nip rollers pull against web that can't pay out, and the bag tears. The manual's rule: if the web of bags breaks prematurely, the tension is too high.

The “it frees up after sitting” behavior is stick-slip: a dirty, glazed, or over-tightened strap grabs with a click when it re-engages, then releases after standing. It's a friction state, not a machine mode — no setting engages the rollers together.

The nip rollers (“active/passive” pair): cleaning, alignment & compression

The two rollers past the load table are the nip rollers (not related to the air compressor): one rubber-covered grooved roll (the driven, “active” one) and one grooved steel roll that presses into it. The pressing force is the compression — it's how hard the pair grips the web. The manual's trade-off: too little compression and bags won't tear off after sealing (they slip); too much and you wear the drive roll and motor — and the grip fights the dancer brake, which is what rips film.

Cleaning comes before any of this. Wipe both nip rollers with alcohol on a cotton cloth (power off) — dirt makes them slip (bags stop tearing off), glaze/residue makes them grab (tearing + that audible clunk). The manual is explicit: always clean rollers before adjusting — a dirty roller reads as a miscalibrated one.

Adjustment is two jobs in one: make the rollers parallel, then set the compression. Both are done from the two side panels:

1. Power off, unplug, remove the left and right side covers
2. Clean both rollers with alcohol first
3. On each side panel, loosen the two locking bolts on the upper block of the compression assembly, then loosen the nut on the adjustment screw (see figure below)
4. With the inner frame locked UP, turn the adjustment screws counterclockwise to lower the bottom roller until it's parallel to the top roller with a 1/16" gap — put a lamp behind the rollers so you can see light through the gap and judge parallelism
5. Turn the screws clockwise, alternating left screw / right screw, keeping the roller parallel, until the rollers just touch across the full width
6. Drop the inner frame down and raise it again — both ends must touch simultaneously. If not, redo from the parallel step
7. Snug the upper block bolts and recheck; don't gorilla-tighten

Fix order — one change at a time

Run a test cycle after each step. If a change makes it worse, put it back (manual's rule) and move to the next step:

References & manual links

No public video exists for the dancer/brake adjustment — the vendor's only operator video (threading, on Vimeo) is domain-locked to advancedpoly.com. Our own threading video is in the Rebagging section; a short clip of the strap adjustment belongs here when we film it.

Wear parts — keep these on the shelf

Daily / weekly / monthly maintenance rhythm

From the manual's Preventative Maintenance Checklist (§4.16), matched to who does it:

Compressor consumables (drain valve/petcock) are the compressor maker's parts, not APPI's — see the Compressor setup section.

Settings lost on power-off — PLC battery, and why the machine shouldn't run 24/7

If settings “evaporate” when the machine is powered off, the PLC's backup battery is dead — the manual is explicit that changed settings save immediately and survive power loss (§3.41). The battery is a 3V lithium coin cell for the Panasonic FP Sigma PLC: APPI part TP-214111 → (generic: Panasonic AFPG804; also in the Level 2 spare parts kit). It's a ~$10–30 coin cell with a multi-year design life — if it's original to the machine, it's overdue.

Recommended fix order:

1. Job Save first — before any battery work: Main Menu → Job Save writes current settings to a saved job slot (manual §3.41), so the recipe can be recalled even if volatile memory clears
2. USB external memory (the built-in solution) — the machine natively supports USB recipe storage. Use a small name-brand drive, 8–32GB, formatted FAT32 with an MBR partition table (old embedded USB hosts are picky; large or exotic drives often fail). On a Mac: Disk Utility → Erase → MS-DOS (FAT); for >32GB drives use diskutil eraseVolume FAT32 THRIL MBRFormat /dev/diskN. Leave the stick empty — the machine creates its own structure (a DAT0000/ folder tree plus REC0000.CSV). Then: unscrew the back cover of the touch-screen housing, insert the drive into the port on the bottom-left of the screen unit, go Main Menu → Tech Assist (passcode 1001) → Bagger Factory → Bag Registration (right side) → PLC / USB toggle at the bottom of that screen — switch it to USB (manual §3.40–3.42; on older software the toggle sits inside Perf Registration instead). Then Job Save as usual. The stick stays with the machine: never reformat or reuse it elsewhere
   USB-mode gotchas (verified on our machine): the on-device Recipe List screen shows nothing in USB mode — that's normal; the recipe record (REC0000.CSV) is only readable on a PC. Job Search has no browse list in USB mode: you must type the exact job name on the keypad and press Enter/Search, then Load. First boot after power-off will ask you to load a job — that's expected; type the name and load it
3. Replace the PLC battery — different location: it's on the PLC inside the electrical cabinet, not behind the touchscreen housing. Do the USB setup first; with jobs saved to the stick the swap loses all risk. Swap with the machine powered ON (the PLC's power supply holds memory during the swap; the battery only matters when power is off): pull the old coin cell, click in the new one (TP-214111 / Panasonic AFPG804), then power-cycle once and confirm settings survived
4. Return to normal power-off at end of day — with battery + saved jobs (and optionally USB memory), shutdown should no longer lose settings. Running 24/7 was masking a dead battery; it also wastes energy, adds heater-hours, and lets Auto+Start cycle empty bags all night (see the phantom activation note)