Slitter Man

The Universal X6 Duplex Slitter Rewinder. ICE Europe was great again this year  The Slitter, Automatic Core Cutter, Hot Melt Coating Station and Roll Handling Trolley we took are all back in our factory (only briefly; we sold them).   ICE Europe is something of a highlight in our calendar, and with good reason.  Organising our presence at this exhibition takes a great deal of planning and careful thought, but this year (yet again) the logistical side of the event went very smoothly indeed.  ICE is a great opportunity not only to meet new customers, but also to mix with some of the people we only usually communicate with by phone and email (like journalists). The main focus of our stand was a Universal X6 Slitter . We displayed (and ran) the most popular variant of this machine, which was set up for flexible packaging slitting.  The automation and tension control features of the X6 proved extremely popular with the crowds of delegates who flooded our stand...

The Universal X6 Laser-perforation and Inspection Slitter answers the requirement modern food-packaging companies have to perforate packaging films in-line. By perforating in-line huge savings can be made, both in time to process and in capital investment. Much like the Universal HMCS (Hot Melt Coating Station) this Laser-perforating slitter rewinder adheres to the fact that if you can have one machine to complete at least two tasks then energy requirements are lower, staffing / operator requirements are reduced and product can be processed much faster than if each materials were loaded and unloaded onto two separate bits of machinery. With the X6 Laser-perforation and Inspection Slitter we've taken this theory up a notch by also including a vision system. In food packing accuracy is everything - if perforations are slightly too large or too small the food-preservation qualities change dramatically. Food packagers demand perfection and proof of perfection. The Universal X6 ...

Recently I sold a small used slitter to a company with a very simple product process - they buy in big rolls of material and then use a slitter to cut to length.  Unlike most of the cutting machines we sell this customer didn't need a machine that could slit rolls of material down into narrower rolls; all they needed to do was to load a master / parent roll and cut it to length. The used slitter I sold them was ideal for the job - they loaded a large jumbo / parent roll and the operator entered details of the length of the roll he wanted to wind and pressed the 'go' button.  The machine would smoothly ramp up to speed and then slow down in time to stop at length.  This process shows a converting machine being used at its most basic, and it's certainly an effective way of selling rolls of material that sold has having an exact length. Every machine we design and build at Universal has a very accurate cut to length facility - on our larger machines most customers wind...

Let's get back to basics - what is slitting?  Slitting is essentially cutting, but has come to be assumed to mean cutting in a certain way.  Whereas use of the word 'cutting' might denote a cut being made in a material or object using a saw, a sharp blade or another method 'slitting' has come to mean to cutting using a blade.  I'm saying this based on my own experience of working in the slitting / converting industry, so naturally my perspective isn't exactly objective.  In fact it's difficult for me to answer the question 'what is slitting' without considering that (to me at least) the very word 'slitting' has become onomatopoeia! But what does it mean? If I was pushed to condense the meaning of 'slitting' into a single sentence (which I guess is the very point of this blog post) then I would have to say: "Slitting is the process of making a slit (cut)." As intimated above, to me slitting in the process of loading...

As a part of our differential chuck range we have 9mm wide differential chucks that are suitable down to a slit width of 10mm.  The overall cost of differential shafts will rise slightly the smaller your minimum slit width.  The 9mm wide diff chucks aren't especially expensive, you just need more of them if you're slitting the full width of the shaft.  Some customers use a variety of chuck widths (and / or spacers) on their shafts then have the operators move the chucks around according to which job is being run, this takes time, so other customers load their entire shafts with narrower width chucks.  The logic being that the initial cost of the chucks is quickly mitigated by the saved labour and time costs.  Wide rolls will run on narrow differential chucks without any issue, whereas narrow slit rolls will not wind happily onto wide differential chucks. So is it worth investing in narrow differential chucks?  The answer is yes!

We have published a new video on the  Universal X2 Salvage Winder page on our website.  This is the first footage of our popular X2 Salvage Winder (A.K.A Doctor Rewinder ) that we have made publicly available. The X2 variant shown in the video was built to accommodate large roll diameters, and this is worth mentioning because the design of the X2 does change depending on the demands of the processes for which it will be used. Our X2 is designed to be versatile so trying to list all the processes it is capable of would be impossible, here is a list of some of the more common uses: Salvage winding Recycling waste product (by trimming) Correcting badly wound rolls (by web guiding) Defect removal (using splice table) Print inspection Winding to length Winding from one core size to another Correction tension on rolls Trimming Changing print orientation Click here to find out more about Universal X2 Salvage Winders...

Web guiding is a term describing the method used to correct badly wound rolls or material and is used on slitters and salvage winders .  A sensor looks at material (web) running through a machine and sends a signal to a device that moves parts of the machine to correct the badly wound roll.  Putting it at its most basic web guiding systems allow you to load a roll with a bad edge profile (I.E. not flat) onto a machine rewind it so that it has a flat edge profile. Guider eyes (sensors) read the edge of the web, a line on the web or a 'broken' line printed on a roll of material.  If the web guiding system 'sees' the web move left it will move the web to the right so that as it winds up on the rewind end of the slitter / doctor machine the edge of the final roll will be flat. Many older web guiders move the winding web using hydraulic or pneumatic (air) methods, but hydraulics can leak oil onto the web and pneumatics tend to have slow response times unsuitable to f...