Selecting the right winder for your web production line is essential to consistently producing high-quality rolls that are free of defects. But when it comes to choosing the best machine for the job, what do you need to consider?

When assessing the performance of web processing machinery, users often consider the overall throughput, quality of the final product, and its safety features. These considerations are essential, but it’s important not to overlook one of the most important features of a well-engineered machine, the user interface (UI).

As the name implies, a web accumulator is a machine built for one primary function, to accumulate and temporarily store material fed from or into a continuous process to a machine or operation that must be momentarily stopped or run slower than its processing line speed.

Manufacturers of industrial safety devices and machinery control systems are continually developing new products in response to the updated safety requirements. They can be excellent resources for which devices or systems to consider and ways to apply them to ensure that your equipment meets today’s safety standards. For it is way better to be safe ― by working with the latest guidelines, understanding the risk assessment process, and putting the necessary risk reduction measures in place than to be sorry.

In earlier blog posts, we compared center winders to surface winders and explained the fundamental differences between these two winding methods. In this article, we will focus on surface winding and compare two distinct surface winder configurations and the strengths and weaknesses of each type.

A substantial percentage of all products wound into a roll start by applying the material to some form of a tube, or core, to begin the winding process. On the rare occasion, this task can be completed without using a core at all, but the majority use a paper, plastic, or metal tube, with paper being the most commonly used core material. When the roll of material on the core is used up, the core generally gets discarded (think of a roll of paper towels used in your kitchen). These easily disposable items are sometimes viewed as trivial components of the production process, yet they can cause significant pain to those directly involved in the converting process if their quality or physical properties are not suitable for the operation.

When narrowing down your specifications for a new web handling or converting system, it is important to consider the various levels of automation that are available, the costs associated with each, and the long-term savings that are realized by including these features in your initial purchase.When narrowing down your specifications for a new web handling or converting system, it is important to consider the various levels of automation that are available, the costs associated with each, and the long-term savings that are realized by including these features in your initial purchase.

A converting machine operator has the unenviable task of producing wound rolls of acceptable quality from imperfect web materials. It takes an incredible amount of technology and equipment to produce some of the high-tech structures used in today’s flexible packaging applications, and things don’t always go as planned.

Secondary manufacturing and converting operations, such as printing, extrusion laminating, or slitting and rewinding, start by unwinding material from a roll into the downstream process. Process operating speeds and type of unwind selected can have an impact on the level of safeguarding required to meet current safety standards.

As a manufacturer of machinery for the plastics industry, one of our main concerns when designing, engineering, and building these machines is to always keep safety in mind. Operating machinery can always carry the risk of injury. Workers can be struck by moving parts, trapped between rollers, belts, and pulleys, and cut or punctured by sharp edges. That’s why safety standardization efforts are developed to define, for example, the type of guarding, fencing, or torque limitation. 

Maintaining the proper web tension at the unwind is critical to the success of a web process. In most situations, two components work together to achieve and maintain the desired tension. Previously we discussed one of these components, the braking system, which applies torque in proportion to the desired web tension. We will now focus our attention on the control system, which provides the required signals to the braking system to regulate the web tension. Control systems are open loop or closed loop and various configurations of each of these exist. 

Many web processing applications need a way to unwind web material into a subsequent operation. Whether used inline in an extrusion laminating process or offline in a slitting and rewinding operation, an unwind stand must deliver the material into the process while maintaining the proper web tension to ensure reliable web transport. It’s the tension control requirements that can complicate the simple act of unwinding the material. 

While it’s natural for processors to blame the winder when defects appear in roll goods, more often than not the root cause of the problem can be traced to the process upstream.