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Blogmaster: Dr. David Roisum

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01

Mandrel/Spool/Roller Journal Safety

Posted by David Roisum on October 1, 2011
Thankfully, journal failures are rare.  However, when it does occur it is often catastrophic; things come loose; things that have mass and speed; things that clearly pose a safety hazard when they come loose. Most journal failures are due to fatigue at stress risers at the journal fillets; eve...

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Posted in: Design, History, Maintenance, Rollers, Safety, Winding
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27

PFFC - RIP

Posted by David Roisum on August 27, 2011
PFFC - RIP
Wait a day before hitting the return button is good advice when you are upset.  I waited two days in this case, just in case. The owner of Paper, Film and Foil Converter magazine, Penton Media Inc., has decided to discontinue producing the print magazine and all its electronic media products. ...

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Posted in: (Other) Converting, Current Affairs, History, New & Noteworthy
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05

Web History III - Converting

Posted by David Roisum on June 5, 2011
Web History III - Converting
Judson Moss Bemis began his bag manufacturing business in 1858.  Since then the Bemis company has gone from producing cotton and burlap bags for millers along the Mississippi River to a global powerhouse producing technologically-advanced flexible packaging and pressure sensitive solutions for ...

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Posted in: (Other) Converting, History
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29

Web History II - Papermaking

Posted by David Roisum on May 29, 2011
How old is web handling?  One answer might be dating to the early 1800’s with the commercialization of the fourdrinier that first enabled continuous papermaking instead of the batch process it had remained for thousands of years. The oldest still operating paper making company in the U...

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Posted in: History
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27

R Duane Smith named TAPPI Fellow

Posted by David Roisum on May 27, 2011
R Duane Smith named TAPPI Fellow
Duane, Product Manager of Unwind, Winding and Slitting Systems at Davis-Standard / Black Clawson, is a graduate of the Rochester Institute with a bachelor of science in mechanical Engineering, he has worked for more than 35 years with Black Clawson. He has received two patents dealing with winding a...

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Posted in: History
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22

Web History I - Weaving

Posted by David Roisum on May 22, 2011
Web History I - Weaving
How old is web handling?  The oldest industry is weaving. Vertical, warp-weighted looms (where tension is kept by tying weights to bundles of threads) was well known in ancient Greece. By 1900 B.C., Egyptians also had a variation on this design, using a second bar in place of the weights. ...

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Posted in: (Other) Converting, History
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15

Web Handling Requires Balls

Posted by David Roisum on May 15, 2011
Web Handling Requires Balls
We owe an enormous debt to Sweden, though it took 10 visits and 30 years to learn this.  It was some copious mix of arrogance and ignorance on my part to assume that the US is the web handling capital of the world from which flows the most important innovations. However, the most important web...

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Posted in: Design, History, People, Rollers
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27

Sacrificial Lamb

Posted by David Roisum on March 27, 2011
Sacrificial Lamb
Beloit Corporation was the biggest, oldest and, arguably, most capable of a thousand web machine builders.  Did you know, for example, that Beloit displayed a fully assembled paper machine at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago?  (By then it had designed and built more than 100 paper ma...

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Posted in: Design, History
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17

English vs. US Customary Units

Posted by David Roisum on January 17, 2011
I was born into a background of ‘English’ Units of measure.  While I was in grade school most of the African and Indonesian nations were completing metrification; the last holdout being South Africa which converted in 1968 following the lead of Britain which converted three years ea...

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Posted in: History, Problem Solving
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16

Aluminium vs. Aluminum

Posted by David Roisum on January 16, 2011
Aluminium vs. Aluminum
I am listening to an amazing book titled The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements.  Here Sam Kean weaves a fascinating combination of biography, history and science.  To give just one example is the ...

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Posted in: History
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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.