OT: ADV: Web handling machinery design ... self-compensating rollers
Sporkman
personally from sales, outside of continued employment at my company
which naturally needs income to survive and prosper.
For those machine design engineers, machinery builders and factory floor
technicians who are flummoxed by web media which wander across the width
of the machines they design, build and maintain (and which have to be
intermittantly or constantly adjusted to compensate) my company has a
very sweet patented solution which can be easily implemented in most
applications. We call it simply a Compensating Roll, and it is actually
a self-adjusting idler which reacts immediately (essentially no lag) to
pressure differentials across its length (across the web width) by
"wobbling" slightly ... really adjusting its axis of rotation such that
the web seeks its own centered path. It is neither crowned (convex) nor
bowed (concave), but rather is truly cylindrical, and it has been used
mostly at around 350 RPM to 850 RPM (translating to approximately 500 to
1200 linear feet per minute) in the corrugated paperboard industry for a
couple of decades now with great success. It can work at faster speeds
(and slower) as well with some adjustment and across a great variety of
lengths (web widths). It could also be the end of some companies'
problems in other industries which handle webs, whether paper, plastic
or other thin media. We just haven't marketed it for very much other
than corrugated board manufacturing applications. That particular
industry is pretty well saturated with this product by now -- almost
everybody uses these things -- and I'm trying to help my company by
introducing the product to other industries this way (Usenet).
If you or someone you know works in a web handling industry, in whatever
capacity, where web wander on handling machinery can be a problem please
give us a call and let us know the specifics. We'll probably be able to
come up with either an off-the-shelf solution or a very quickly
customized solution to fix the problem permanently and economically. If
you want to design your own Compensating Roll for a particular
application I imagine the management would be happy also to talk about
licensing. We're a small company and we can react quickly to inquiries.
Please see our Web site at www.proferosystems.com and you can email me
as "mark@(appropriate domain).com" if you have technical questions. I'm
at extension 116 if you wish to call.
Thanks very much,
Mark Stapleton
Design Engineer
Charlotte, North Carolina