The web and the paper slurry on top are carried very, very quickly down the first portion of the line, and the water is pulled out through the web screen. When manufacturing paper, you begin with wood material that’s essentially been bleached through a process and is injected out onto a very fine mesh screen called a web. It’s used in manufacturing and rolling paper. Mory: Roll alignment is important in rolling sheets, foils, strips, and other configurations of steel, aluminum, bronze, brass, copper, and other metals. In what other types of manufacturing would roll alignment come into play? These misalignments can all create quality problems for people over time. Another problem can arise when the center of the film sheet is stretched and uneven. That’s what film and paper material looks like when it comes out of a roll process where it’s not even. It’s going to get all squishy and mushy and when it dries it will not look like the other edge of the rolled sheet. It’s analogous to taking a roll of toilet paper and putting one side of it into water. When you roll that material up at the end of the process, you’re going to end up with uneven material. It’s going to be drawn harder on one side of the machine than the other. As you think of a series of rollers in a machine with a material moving through it and if the path on one side of the roll track is greater than the path on the other track, then that material is going to stretch. Both of these cases involve handling film as it moves through a machine. Another part of plastics work is what we call converting, and this is where existing film that’s been created either in your plant or by another facility is run through a roll process to be coated, treated or have some other process applied to that film. Aligning those rolls is an important part of making an even sheet of material. The alignment of those rolls is important because the material can stretch unevenly when the path length on one side of the roll system is longer than the path on the other side. This typically begins with an extrusion process where that thin, hot film is injected out into a roll system and then carried along through a series of well-positioned rolls and idlers and allowed to cool and be formed into a thin, plastic film. A good example is making plastic sheet or thin film. ![]() ![]() Mory: That’s a good question, John, and it depends on the manufacturing process. John: So let’s say I run a plastics company that makes sheet materials, and I came to you and I had a question like, “Do we need roll alignment?” How would you respond to that? Today we’re here to talk about laser alignment, and specifically aligning roll and web manufacturing systems. This is John Maher, and I’m here with Mory Creighton, president of Pinpoint Laser Systems in Peabody, Massachusetts.
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