Soaps are an essential daily use item in everyone's life, irrespective of which part of the world they are in, which culture they belong to or what is their profession. Right from being used for maintaining hygiene to being used for getting a smooth and glowing skin, soaps are thought of as indispensable item of our lives. Apart from soaps that are used as body cleaners, other varieties of soaps are also available, such as laundry soaps, utensil cleaning soaps etc. Ever thought about how these are made? The answer to this question is simple, soaps are manufactured by soap making machines using some specific raw materials such as olive oil, coconut oil, moisturizer, sodium hydroxide etc. These are used by small scale soap manufacturing firms to global FMCG enterprises for making soaps.
As a result of soaps being one of the most commonly used items across the globe, with innumerable variations in their ingredients, design etc., soap making machines come in various sizes, with different working principles and operating modes. Some notable soap making machines are duplex vacuum plodder, soap bar cutting machine, laundry soap machine, toilet soap making machine and many more.
Soap making machines produce soaps through the following four step:
- Saponification – In this process a mixture of tallow and coconut oil is usually mixed with sodium hydroxide and afterwards heated
- Glycerine removal - In this step, most of the glycerine is removed. This is primarily done because glycerine is much more valuable than soap and thus is used in separate products
- Soap purification – In the third step, the remaining amount of sodium hydroxide is neutralized through using citric acid
- Finishing – In this final step, the requisite preservatives, color and perfume are added in to the soap and it is also shaped into bars
Features of modern soap making machines
- These are specially built for heavy duty usage and can churn out lakhs of soap bars every month
- Most soap making machines today are very easy to operate and require a maximum of 2 people
- These can work flawlessly in all weather conditions and are resistant to UV rays
- These have a long service life and require minimal maintenance
- Some soap making machines also have the provision of sampling, i.e – a process in which a small amount of the final product that is intended to be produced is taken and checked
Common mistakes to be careful of while using soap making machines:
- Never make a very large soap batch without first sampling it
- As far as possible, avoid changing the soap recipe. If a change is unavoidable, then do it very carefully
- Be patient, a lot of times good soap recipes fail only because the people involved were in too much hurry, thus not allowing the soap to mix well
- The oil being used for soap making must be fed into the machine in adequate quantities. Simple thumb rule would be, the higher is the percentage of oil, the effect of soap thickening will be that much more visible
