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, ...

Slitters save money (and energy)!

If you look in the new issue of Package Print Worldwide ( @PackPrintWorld ) you'll spot a photo of our rather handsome X3 Slitter Rewinder on page 18, the reason this slice of cool blue is on page 18 is because it is a good example of one of our energy (and money) saving slitters. A large part of my job at Universal Converting Equipment involves working on press releases and talking to editors and journalists, and while this bit of coverage is one of many I thought I'd mention it here on my own blog because energy efficiency is a topic we've been talking about a lot recently. Reducing energy usage has long been a hot topic in our factory (and equally importantly in our design suite), and over the last few months we've started to let the world know what our machines can do to reduce energy consumption. I'm particularly proud of this aspect of our machinery as reducing energy consumption is something of a personal mission of mine (I even cycle to work!), so I t...

Winding onto 6" cores on a slitter with 3" shafts

A (used) 6" differential ball chuck designed to fit a 60mm rewind shaft (once the 3" chucks have been removed!) I sometimes use this personal blog of mine to talk about the basics of slitting and rewinding, with the content partly led by thinking back to the questions I had when I first started working in the converting machinery industry. One of the first questions I had was 'how on earth can slitter rewinders with 3" rewind shafts be used for winding onto 6" cores?' A lot of converters and labellers / packaging companies regularly switch between winding onto 3" (76mm) and 6" (152mm) cores, which is one of the reasons we designed our Automatic Core Cutter to change between core sizes in under thirty seconds. But what do companies who predominantly wind onto 3" cores do when they need to wind onto 6" cores? The answer is actually quite simple - they remove the 3" ball chucks and slide on 6" core chucks! There are of...

Slitter Man

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