Converting Quarterly title
The Official
Technical Magazine
of AIMCAL
small AIMCAL logo
  Search

Web Handling & Converting

Blogmaster: Dr. David Roisum

18
Bagginess Screening - Film
Amy Thuer of Avery Dennison gave what I believe to be one of the most useful papers in years at the last IWEB conference.  That is the use of roll hardness to screen film rolls from a supplier who had a history of shipping baggy rolls.  She studied the runnability of over 60 rolls on a lam...

[Read the rest of this article...]

14
As we opined in our April 4 blog post, nip is usually the most important winding knob.  Nip is often a vital process knob.  Being so important and so vital you would expect that builders have these knobs both calibrated (by calculation and procedure) and calibratable (as detailed in the se...

[Read the rest of this article...]

12
Current diameter readout on winders and unwinds is useful for so many reasons that it should be considered essential.  The applications include:  inertia compensation, estimating time left, automatic stopping, auto shutdown (to prevent unwind runoff or winder machine damage) and TNT progra...

[Read the rest of this article...]

10
One of the laziest things a programmer could do on a winder is linear taper.  First off, mixing units (tension and percent) is an unforgivable engineering gaffe.  Second, mixing units is a human engineering faux pas.  Third, what the heck is the tension at the end of the wind?  I...

[Read the rest of this article...]

06
Great papers again today.  Unfortunately, with split sessions I was only able to see half of them.  Ron Lynch led off with web handling myth busting.  This was followed by easy to use equations to calculate tension from sag and an excellent paper on modeling/measurement of speed/tensi...

[Read the rest of this article...]

Posted in: Current Affairs
04
IWEB 2013 Conference - Day 1
About 70 attendees converged on the capital of web handling: Stillwater Oklahoma; home of the Web Handling Research Center.  The keynote speaker, Erik Pederson from Avery Dennison, gave a talk on coating and gave convincing evidence for the need to design their own dies; commercially available ...

[Read the rest of this article...]

Posted in: Current Affairs
30
It Depends on Economics IS an Answer
What it (any process setting) depends on is economics.  There is simply one best place to turn any knob that matters; even though it might not always be simple to determine what that best place is.  What can be said for certain is that best place can not be found by engineering or science....

[Read the rest of this article...]

Posted in: Problem Solving
28
“It depends on …” is NOT an answer
or, at least it is not a good answer.  I was both amused and disturbed by a recent set of commentaries on a LinkedIn group that centered around the question of the ‘best tension for a specific application.’  At least a dozen factors were given; a dozen more could be added with ...

[Read the rest of this article...]

23
Bearings in Distress
It is beyond the scope of this blog to talk about bearing design.  (There are books on the subject).  However, it is easy to compactly describe how you might know that bearings are in distress due to either a machine design or maintenance error.  The most sophisticated is to use a vib...

[Read the rest of this article...]

21
I am dismayed when I see people struggle with machine design faux pas, such as not using a proper displacement or steering guide layout.  Instead, designers move rollers willy-nilly and expect the web will be moved.  By willy-nilly I mean from one end instead of two with an instant center,...

[Read the rest of this article...]

Posted in: Design, Guiding

Blogmaster

David Roisum photo

Dr. David Roisum

Dr. Roisum is a well-known authority in the area of web handling and converting. He has authored seven books, including Winding, Rollers and Web-Handling and has coauthored or edited several others. He was a technical editor for Converting Magazine with a monthly column entitled "Web Works." An accomplished professional speaker and instructor, Roisum has been praised for his skill at translating highly technical information into a common sense practical reference. Dave has been honored by TAPPI with their Finishing & Converting Division Award, Thomas W. Busch Prize and Finest Faculty awards and is a TAPPI Fellow. Dave received his Ph.D. from the Web Handling Research Center where he later became an Industrial Advisory Board member.

Dave has worked for the Beloit Corporation as a designer of winding machinery and later as a manager of research, and for Kimberly-Clark as a converting expert serving all business units. He is now a principal of Finishing Technologies Inc., providing consulting services to more than 300 clients who convert or manufacture: paper, film, foil, nonwovens, textiles and many other materials. He has accumulated much practical experience working in nearly 1,000 plants over the course of more than three decades.

Converting School

Dr. David Roisum's
Upcoming Classes
Sep 17 - 18, 2013 - Chicago, IL
Web Handling and Converting
Sep 19 - 20, 2013 - Chicago, IL
Winding: Machines, Mechanics and Measurements

View the entire AIMCAL Converting School 2013 class schedule »