April 3, 2023

Aluminum tubes can be tricky to fill and crimp to a professional level, especially on automatic tube sealing machines. Traditional CNC machined tube holder inserts will typically leave small dents on your tubes when they flare out upon crimping. The crimping jaws on a filling and crimping machine can also push the tube off center if they are not calibrated correctly. Despite this, aluminum tubes are quite a popular option for cosmetic products, pharmaceutical products, personal care products, and CBD products.

Keeping the tube centered while avoiding any dents to the thin tube wall is the biggest challenge. This is where our flexible 3D printed Flex Puck tube holders and custom spacers excel. In the video below, you can see how the combination of our Flex Pucks and spacers keeps aluminum tubes centered.

As you can see in the video, aluminum tubes are not very stable in the tube holder unless the tube cap is also being held by a spacer. Aluminum tube caps come in a variety of shapes and sizes, so 3D printed spacers are helpful to create a perfect fit for each cap you might have.

The first tube in the video has a diameter of 40mm with a unique, triangular shaped cap. For this tube, a rigid PETG spacer with a circular counterbore works best. Our Flex Pucks for aluminum tubes are designed with a shelf for the tube shoulder to rest on. The tube is depressed all the way into the Flex Puck, leaving just the cap sticking out of the bottom. The tube cap snaps right into the spacer at any orientation, so you can easily run this tooling on your automatic tube filling and crimping machines.

The next tube shown in the video has a diameter of 25mm with a simulated fold, and has the more common “fez” style cap. For these types of tube caps, a flexible spacer 3D printed from TPU stabilizes the tube best. The fez cap is squeezed and held concentrically by the TPU spacer after being depressed into the tube holder assembly.

With extra thin walls on our metal tube Flex Pucks and spacers custom fit to each style of tube cap, our 3D printed tooling allows you to achieve professional level crimping results even on high-speed automatic tube sealing machines. Our Flex Pucks and spacers will fit a variety of tube filling and sealing machines. Read more on that here.

Feel free to reach out and contact us with any questions.