Apparatus for Making Filled Film Bags

An apparatus for producing filled film bags, the apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of processing stations including a first processing station, a second processing station, a third processing station and a fourth processing station;
• a plurality of plate elements configured to be conveyed to various ones of said plurality of processing stations;
• each of said plurality of plate elements having a mold recess;
• said first processing station having a deep-drawing arrangement for deep-drawing a base film into said mold recesses of said plurality of plate elements in order to form filling cavities in the base film;
• said second processing station having a filling arrangement for filling the filling cavities with a filling substance;
• said third processing station having a sealing arrangement for sealing a cover film onto the base film while respectively forming a continuous circumferential seal edge around each of the filling cavities;
• said third processing station being followed by said fourth processing station;
• said fourth processing station having a testing device for optical acquisition and quality assessment of the continuous circumferential seal edge;
• said testing device including an optical camera, an illumination device, and an evaluation unit for images recorded by said optical camera;
• said testing device further including a contrast adjuster for increasing a contrast of images recorded by said camera;
• said contrast adjuster includes a polarization filter of said illumination device and a configuration of said camera as a polarization camera, wherein a polarization direction of said polarization filter is aligned at a polarization angle with respect to a movement direction of said plurality of plate elements;
• and,
• said polarization angle lies in a range of 30° to 60°.