Simplifying slitter concepts

Slitter terminology can be bewildering; part of the problem being that there's no industry standards for the terms used when describing various parts of the slitter and winding process. I've talked about this before so won't focus on it now, instead I'll ask you to point your clicks at this Slitter Glossary, instead I'm going to look at how we describe some of the more complex issues surrounding slitting and rewinding.

Some of terms used when describing slitter processes are conceptual, by which I mean they might describe the part of a process that isn't easily described with the written word. I had my suspicions and they were confirmed when we started work on the aforementioned Slitter Glossary. Because a lot of slitter terminology related to the movement of materials and their reactions to external pressures we have started using graphic overlays to denote movement, see below for a couple of examples.

So if you're looking for a slitter or salvage winder and want to be sure that your needs are fully understood come and speak to the experts https://www.universalconvertingequipment.com/

Driven unwind
A driven unwind describes a system whereby the shaft (or shaftless system) of a Slitter Rewinder that houses the master / jumbo roll is driven by a motor. A driven unwind is often used when a material is tension sensitive, when an unwinding roll is driven it minimises inertia of the parent.

Reversible running

Reversible running salvage slitterReversible running enables salvage / doctor rewinders to run in two directions, allowing print direction to be corrected without the need to unload and re-load the roll.

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Trim removal on slitters

A trim fan attached to a slitter. As discussed previously on this blog the process of slitting (at its most basic) can be reduced to the one-line description of ' a big roll is loaded on one side of the slitter rewinder, and smaller rolls are loaded off the other side' and that's fine... most of the time. Here comes the example! If a 1000mm wide roll is loaded onto a rewinder and is slit down into rolls that are 212mm wide then four rolls would be produced. If your mental maths is up to scratch you might have noticed that 4x212 does not equal 1000, and that means that from the original / master / jumbo roll there will be roughly 117mm left over. Sometimes this happens because the edges of jumbo rolls are discarded due to damage, print reasons or simply because the material being slit isn't coated all the way to the edges of the roll. So what happens to this waste material? Waste material can be wound onto cores in the same way 'correct' rolls are,

Slitter core alignment using lasers

Lasers and slitters go together like cheese and biscuits, and fitting laser scoring, cutting and perforation devices to slitter rewinders is something that has now become reasonably commonplace here in our factory, but lasers can do a lot more than cut and perforate. We've recently had a huge upsurge in interest in our ' ComputaCore ' laser core alignment system, and because it is such a simple system to control and operate it can be a little bit challenging finding many things to write about it - it's simple and it works very well! But what's in the box? We've made our laser core alignment kit as easy to fit as it is to operate, and to highlight the simplicity of this approach to perfect core alignment we've recently published a post on the subject on our blog here - https://www.universalconvertingequipment.com/laser-core-alignment-whats-in-the-kit-and-how-does-it-work We're planning a new promotional video for our laser core alignment syste

Skymark are using laser to stay head of the competition

The news has just gone public that Skymark Packaging Ltd have bought a Universal X6lp Laser perforation Slitter Rewinder for their facility in Scunthorpe, here in the UK. Skymark have recently been in the news for declaring that their experience of the flexible packaging market is particularly buoyant at the moment. Their reasoning is that following the Brexit vote, a lot of supply chain risk is being mitigated by companies processing more materials here in the UK. In addition to sharing common features with our X6 slitter, the X6lp can also laser perforate and produce easy open scribe lines. The easy open packaging systems are popular with producers who want their products to be consumer-friendly, but to still be able to protect the contents of the packaging.

Slitter Man

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