Slitter Man

There’s always something interesting happening here at Universal.  Usually the most interesting activities I get involved with are customer trials or R&D.  Both are great because they are good opportunities to showcase the enthusiasm inherent in the culture at Universal. Sometimes some of the scenes that impress me the most are the quiet ones.  A box full of beautifully machines parts, ready for the assembly line.  Or the fascinating Solidworks schematics being worked on the studiously focussed atmosphere of the drawing office. A couple of days ago I walked through the part of the factory where our CCA Automatic Core Cutters are built.  All the mechanical fitters, electrical and controls engineers were elsewhere.  But on that day, in this quiet section of the factory was the perfect picture of efficiency and productivity - six automatic core cutters, ready for commissioning.  I took a photo on my phone and have decided to share it here, on my personal blog.  Just out of shot is

We have started using the phrase ‘the future of slitting’ in some of our promotional material, and with the recent technical advances we have made with the X6 I think this is a fair boast. I can clearly remember the start of the development process of the Universal X6.  The concept for the X6 wasn’t just revolutionary at a mechanical and controls level.  It was startlingly logical from a practical perspective.  I’m sales and marketing person, not an engineer.  I have never had a job as a machine operator.  Yet I can walk up to a X6 and run a slitting job through it without any problems at all.  The X6 is ‘plug and play’. The Universal X6 was developed from the same starting point as all Universal machines.  The priorities being productivity, ease of use and reliability.  For as long as I have worked with Universal there has been an obsessive attitude to customer support. As the X6 developed from concept to product the ability to further improve support was woven into the very