Parkside needed a slitter rewinder that would achieve consistency in production even across complex laminates such as aluminium foil-based structures. Such substrates can be difficult to process and take a long time to set up, so it was also important that the new machines could minimise changeover times. The machines were installed earlier this year.
Parkside’s global technical manager Brian Harper said Universal rose to the challenges posed by Parkside and proved that the X6 devices could meet their needs.
“Parkside has constantly looked for the best slitter to produce slit reels to an extremely high standard and customer specification,” he said.
“While the company had machines that could produce this material adequately, Parkside believed it needed closed-loop tension control of each of the rewind.”
The slitters run at maximum speeds of up to 300m/min and offer closed-loop rewind tension control with feedback provided by load cells, so that the winding tension can be set precisely as required and the settings can then be applied to the second machine.
The X-Slit slitting system deploys automatic positioning to control the position of knives, anvils and razor blades to very tight tolerances, and slitting tension is optimised with a tension zone through the slitting section.
A 'Quad' wrap material drive system isolates tension between the unwind and rewind, avoiding problems of slippage, scratches and creases that can occur with nip roller and vacuum roller systems.
Harper said the principal application for the slitter was in the tobacco market, although Parkside also services the food and drink, medical, pharmaceutical, household and personal care packaging industries. It now runs 11 slitters across its UK and Asian facilities.
Alan Jones, managing director of Universal Converting Equipment, said Parkside’s demands were challenging.
“Although the Universal X6 machines supplied to Parkside were our standard model, some of their specifications had tighter tolerances than normal,” he said.
£35m turnover-Parkside employs 157 staff, 111 in its 6,600sqm Normanton site and 46 in its second site in Kuala Lumpur.
Formerly Parkside Flexibles Group, it rebranded in 2015, celebrating 10 years of its current ownership. It has been in operation for more than 40 years.
