In the food and beverage industry, the wall thickness of bottles, aluminum cans, and other plastic containers is much more than just a number. It can directly affect material costs, product performance, warranty exposure, and throughput. It can play a big part in the manufacturing process. And most importantly, it can influence margins.

In many manufacturing facilities, thickness measurement is still treated as a quality checkpoint rather than an operational investment. Bottles and cans are cut open for destructive testing. Container components are overbuilt “just to be safe.” Inefficient inspections slow down production. Data is sometimes handwritten, filed away, or never trended. The result? Excess costs and wasted time that add up to slowed production and decreased profitability.

Magna-Mike™ 8600 Thickness Gauge
Evident’s Magna-Mike 8600 changes the equation. A portable thickness gauge designed for nonferrous materials, the Magna-Mike is not simply a measurement device—it’s a practical tool that can help reduce waste, increase throughput, and provide more control over production processes.

For manufacturing engineers, plant managers, and quality leaders, the Magna-Mike is more than measurement—it’s a smart operational investment ideal for the production of food and beverage containers.

The Real Costs of Thickness Uncertainty
In the manufacture of nonferrous plastic, glass, and aluminum containers, there are inherent risks:

• Conservative designs can drive material overuse
• Destructive testing can waste time and labor
• Slow inspections can create bottlenecks
• Out-of-spec parts must be ground and remolded, adding time and labor costs

Each of these issues affects cost differently, but they can all be traced back to one common cause: limited visibility into actual wall thickness during production. If you can’t accurately measure thickness quickly, easily, and nondestructively, you compensate—by building thicker, testing less frequently, or accepting variability. None of these are Lean or profitable strategies.

A Different Way to Measure Thickness
The Magna-Mike uses a simple magnetic method to measure thickness in nonferrous materials. A magnetic probe is placed on one side of the material, and a small target ball, disk, or wire is placed on the opposite side (or dropped inside a hollow part). The probe’s Hall Effect sensor measures the distance to the target and instantly displays the material thickness.

With the Magna-Mike, there’s no cutting and no sectioning. Measurements update at up to 60 Hz, enabling fast scanning. And with the use of the Magna-Mike’s Minimum Mode, you can easily capture your material’s thinnest point during every pass. The Magna-Mike is straightforward enough for the shop floor—and powerful and repeatable enough to support long-term quality control.

Reduced Rework
If you’re still cutting apart finished components for thickness verification, these must be ground and remolded, adding time and labor costs.

With the Magna-Mike, you can measure thickness from 0.001 mm (0.0001 in.) up to 25.4 mm (1 in.), depending on the selected target , with no need to cut parts open. This range allows you to verify everything from thin plastic packaging walls to thicker glass, aluminum, or composite structures—without sacrificing any components. This means:

• Fewer rejected pieces
• Immediate feedback during setup
• Verification without any interruptions in production
• Earlier detection of variation

No Need to Overbuild “Just in Case”
Material cost is one of the most manageable aspects of manufacturing. But when thickness control is uncertain, food and beverage manufacturers often compensate by adding “just in case” safety margins. An extra fraction of a millimeter across thousands or millions of units can lead to significant waste. The Magna-Mike delivers repeatable, nondestructive measurement that lets you:

• Optimize material usage
• Reduce excess without sacrificing safety
• Confidently adjust molding/forming processes

The Magna-Mike supports multipoint calibration and delivers repeatable results across a range of target types, allowing you to responsibly tighten tolerances. Better data doesn’t just improve quality—it enables Leaner design.

Increased Throughput and the Elimination of Bottlenecks
Inspection methods can quietly become production constraints. If thickness gauging requires complex setups, specialized lab environments, or highly trained NDT personnel, it doesn’t scale easily across a plant. The Magna-Mike was built for easy portability and simple plant-floor deployment:

• Compact handheld unit (approximately 236 mm x 167 mm x 70 mm)
• Battery operation up to 16 hours
• IP67 design for versatile durability
• Straight, right-angle, and low-profile articulating probes

With the Magna-Mike, operators can easily measure on the line, at a workstation, or directly on complex geometries, with no waiting for lab access, no large moving parts, and no elaborate fixturing. The faster your verification loop, the faster you can move.

Versatility in Challenging Environments
Ultrasonic thickness gauges excel in many applications. But in certain environments—such as food and beverage packaging—the use of couplant fluids is not a viable option. The Magna-Mike’s magnetic method eliminates the need for couplant entirely, making it especially effective for:

• Plastic bottles and packaging
• Glass bottles and containers
• Aluminum cans and containers

And because it uses targets rather than sound waves, the Magna-Mike is a reliable solution in applications where other methods may be less practical. The flexibility of ball, disk, and wire targets allows measurement across varied and challenging geometries, from flat and curved surfaces to tight grooves.

Operator-Friendly Design
In industries like power generation and oil and gas, advanced NDT certifications are common. In food and beverage manufacturing, that’s not always the case. Production engineers and quality managers need a thickness gauge that:

• Is easy and intuitive
• Requires minimal training
• Can be quickly deployed
• Does not require ongoing certification
• Does not need to be recalibrated when the type of material changes

The Magna-Mike operates with a straightforward probe-and-target method and instantly displays clear digital readings. This lowers the barrier to implementation across shifts and departments, allows technicians to perform spot checks without involving specialized teams, and empowers operators to validate their own processes. Simplicity matters.

Proactive Data Storage and Analysis
Thickness measurement shouldn’t stop at the display screen. The Magna-Mike includes an internal file-based data logger capable of storing readings in multiple formats (incremental, sequential, custom point, and 2D grid). Data can be:

• Sent directly to Excel using the WINXL interface
• Exported via USB or RS-232
• Saved to removable microSD cards in .txt or CSV formats

This transforms the Magna-Mike from a reactive tool into a proactive one. Instead of just solving problems on the spot, teams can:

• Trend thickness measurements over time
• Identify process drift
• Support SPC programs
• Generate onboard reports

For Continuous Improvement and Lean leaders, this level of data visibility is extremely powerful, supporting ongoing root cause analysis, process optimization, and margin protection.

Built for Real-World Manufacturing
The Magna-Mike meets MIL-STD environmental testing standards for vibration, drop, and shock, and is designed for IP67 environments. This durability is especially important in manufacturing environments where:

• Equipment gets moved
• Tools are handled across shifts
• Inspections happen near machinery
• Moisture is present

Built for the plant floor, not the lab, the Magna-Mike is a precision instrument engineered with production realities in mind—and built to deliver maximum ROI.

Maximum Return on Investment
When evaluating a thickness gauge investment—or any capital purchase—decision-makers ask common questions: Will this reduce costs? Will it protect our margins? Will it improve throughput? Will it scale? Designed to minimize waste, increase throughput, help control production processes, and lower overall operating costs, the Magna-Mike delivers measurable ROI in a number of ways:

• Material Savings: More precise control reduces overbuilding and material waste
• Faster Inspection: High update rate (60 Hz) and Minimum Mode reduce bottlenecks
• No Destructive Tests: Nondestructive verification preserves parts and lowers labor
• Data-Driven Improvement: Integrated logging and export capabilities support long-term process optimization

Wall thickness is much more than a quality metric. It’s a cost driver, a throughput constraint, a material decision, and a performance factor. And in many operations, optimizing thickness by a small percentage can justify the investment in a nondestructive thickness gauge.

Treating thickness gauging more strategically can change the way you approach inspection and testing, and the way you operate as a whole. With the Magna-Mike 8600, you can easily measure wall thicknesses, verify results in process, eliminate the use of couplant, and capture actionable long-term data. For food and beverage manufacturing decision-makers and operators alike, this means protecting margins, reducing waste, and enabling smarter and more confident production.

Schedule a Free Magna-Mike 8600 Demo
Experience fast, easy thickness measurement for yourself with a hands-on Magna-Mike demo. See how the Magna-Mike can help reduce waste, eliminate destructive testing, and maximize your investment in measurement technology.

Schedule Your Demo