Taking the right turn

23 February 2009



Special machine solves roll handling problem


In May 2008, US based Carestream Health, the former Eastman Kodak Health Group, launched Tollcoating.com, a contract manufacturing business providing solvent and aqueous coating services for medical, display, electronic and imaging products. With facilities in White City, Oregon, and Windsor, Colorado, it delivers specialised, high speed, multilayer coatings on paper and PET film substrates for a broad range of applications.

The 225,000 ft2 facility in White City recently added an electro-hydraulically powered upender from Tilt-Lock to handle rolls of paper during preparation for coating. The rolls are delivered in an up-ended orientation, and the process requires them to be oriented horizontally.”

According to John Hart, hardware engineer for Carestream Health, the previous use of a fork truck with a rotating clamp assembly presented a difficult process that occasionally resulted in dropped rolls and long interruptions for battery changes on the fork truck.

“The rotating clamp would grasp the vertical roll, lift it from the pallet, rotate it 90 degrees and place it on a horizontal transport rack in preparation for coating,” he recalls. “The process was quite temperamental. Having only one fork truck capable of gripping and rotating a roll interrupted production every time a battery change took place. Loosely wound rolls telescoping out of the grippers had also been an occasional problem.”

Now, to improve safety and productivity, the table, upon which the palletised vertical roll is placed for down-ending, features ball rollers to allow for much easier pallet positioning. A V-block arrangement is integrated into the table to support the round pallet when the upender is in the horizontal or down-ended position. The V-block also has a clamp to keep the pallet from tipping off the V-block when the down-ended roll is removed from the pallet.

“The V-block assembly can be translated up and down to align the pallet-centring peg with the core of an incoming roll to be up-ended,” explains John Hart. “The V-table, by which the down-ended roll is supported, can be translated in a horizontal direction to permit engagement or disengagement of the roll core from the pallet centring peg. It’s quite a machine.”

For additional safety, Carestream added guarding and light curtains to the upender after its delivery. A PLC control system was also integrated to provide a fully automated operation.

The upender, which is about the size of a pick-up truck, can handle a maximum core length of 66 in and a maximum roll diameter of 39-3/8 in. The hydraulics are limited to 5,000 lb, although the mechanical part of the machine can hande much more.

In fact, “that came up at one point,” John Hart says. “Production was looking into a product that was supplied in heavier rolls. It is possible to upgrade the hydraulics, but the product went away and the point became moot.”

The upender is currently being used to handle rolls of paper. The machine’s main job is to down-end the rolls for coating and then up-end them for shipping to customers. “A lot of our suppliers don’t send the rolls in the proper orientation,” says Dave Schoellerman, the White City plant manager, “which is why the upender is very important.”

According to John Hart, the upender is operating very well.

“We asked Tilt-Lock to operate a bit outside of their expertise with the request for roll and pallet positioning, but they put together a very nice machine for us.”

Carestream Health’s Oregon facility has two coating machines and three slitters. Its primary product is Kodak Dryview laser imaging film, a digital output film used to print medical images such as MRI and CT scans. PET film comes from Tollcoating.com’s in-house manufacturing operation, and suppliers SKC Films and Eastman Kodak. Most of Tollcoating.com’s business so far has been for contract coating services.

“We are doing a lot of toll coating right now, but not a lot of toll converting – yet,” says Dave Schoellerman. “We have a lot of different customers doing different things.”

For example, the coating of high quality photographic paper typically found in retail digital printing kiosks is done at Tollcoating.com. Many other types of developmental, proprietary coatings are also progressing.

By Natalie Hasselbacher, associate editor of US based Converting Magazine.


The upender provides safe roll handling during coating preparation Tilt-Lock

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