Winding – tensioning – or guiding – Convolute winding of material – With cutting – perforating – or notching
Reexamination Certificate
1999-06-17
2001-09-04
Jillions, John M. (Department: 3653)
Winding, tensioning, or guiding
Convolute winding of material
With cutting, perforating, or notching
C242S530400, C242S533700, C242S541100, C242S547000, C242S547000, C242S548000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06283402
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a rewinder method and apparatus for rewinding reeled webs of material and in particular to a multi-function slitter rewinder for slitting and rewinding reeled webs.
DESCRIPTION OF THE BACKGROUND ART
Various types of slitter rewinder machine are in use, each having advantages and disadvantages and each being suited to and manufactured for particular applications. These types of machine can be categorised according to their rewinding geometry, including centre wind, centre wind with contact lay-on, surface wind, centre surface wind and constant-gap winding. These geometries are illustrated respectively in
FIGS. 1
to
5
, showing the rewind reel
2
, web
4
and contact roller
6
(if present).
Centre winding (
FIG. 1
) is the simplest geometry, the reel itself being driven and the web being drawn tangentially onto the reel. A machine using this arrangement is simple to operate and unload and can run at high speed. However, there is a tendency for air to be trapped beneath the web as it is drawn onto the reel. This reduces the precision of winding and renders this technique unsuitable for certain web materials and web widths.
Centre winding with contact lay-on (
FIG. 2
) reduces the entrapment of air, the air being excluded by the pressure between the lay-on roller and the reeled web. This arrangement improves accuracy but still can not be used with certain web materials, such as fragile or elastic materials.
These centre wind geometries are typically used in duplex centre winding machines, in which reels may be wound on either of two laterally-spaced parallel shafts. This enables a wider web (carried on a third parallel shaft) to be slit into a plurality of narrower webs, adjacent narrower webs being rewound onto alternate rewind shafts of the duplex centre winder.
In a surface winder (
FIG. 3
) a lay-on, or contact, roller is used but the lay-on roller is driven and the rewind reel is not. The pressure of the lay-on roller on the surface of the rewind reel is sufficient to drive the rewind reel. This system has the advantage that the web can be wound onto the rewind reel under very low tension. This is suitable for fragile or elastic web materials.
Centre surface winding (
FIG. 4
) entails the use of a lay-on roller but both the lay-on roller and the rewind reel are driven. This allows optimum control of the web tension on the rewind reel but increases the complexity and cost of the machine compared with a simple centre wind system. In particular, reel loading and unloading is more complicated and so reel change over times are disadvantageously long.
In constant gap winding (FIG.
5
), an idle roller is used for guiding the web onto the rewind reel during centre winding. The idle roller does not contact the rewind reel but is moved away from the rewinder reel shaft during winding so as to keep constant the distance travelled by the web between the idle roller and the rewind reel.
The performance of these conventional rewind machines is becoming more of a problem as environmental pressures require reduced waste and reduced quantity of packaging materials (for which web materials are commonly used), which leads to the development of web materials having higher barrier properties, thinner films and papers, and environmentally friendly inks. Such materials become more difficult to handle and therefore expose the limitations of conventional rewinding machines.
STATEMENT OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the invention to overcome the problems of prior art rewinding machines as described above.
It is a further object of the invention to improve on the winding performance of prior art rewinding machines.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a rewinding machine having greater flexibility of winding geometry than in the prior art.
It is a still further object of the invention to enable surface winding geometries with improved reel handling, particularly for reel unloading.
The invention provides in its various aspects a rewinding apparatus, a rewinding method and an unloading method as defined in the appended independent claims. Preferred or advantageous features of the invention are set out in dependent subclaims.
The invention thus provides a method and an apparatus in which a rewind reel is mounted on a shaft and in which a lay-on roller can be traversed laterally so that it moves away from the shaft as the diameter of the rewind reel increases during winding. The rewind reel and/or the lay-on roller may or may not be driven such that the method and apparatus of the invention can implement centre winding with contact lay-on, surface winding or centre surface winding depending on whether the reel and/or the lay-on roller is driven. In addition, if the lay-on roller is bypassed or held in a fixed position distant from the rewind shaft, and the rewind reel driven, centre winding can be achieved.
Advantageously, constant gap winding can also be achieved by traversing a guide (or idle) roller away from the rewind shaft during rewinding.
Advantageously, the invention may be implemented in a duplex rewinder and combined with a slitting function.
According to a second aspect, the invention also provides a method and apparatus for implementing the speed and ease of loading and unloading conventionally associated with a centre winding machine in a machine which is also capable of surface winding and constant gap winding. Rewind reels may thus be unloaded axially from the or each rewind shaft.
Thus, in a preferred embodiment, the invention may advantageously provide a method and apparatus in which a reeled feed web is unreeled and passed through a set of slitting knives before the slit webs are rewound on rewind reels each carried by one of two differential or lock-bar shafts. The shafts are fixed in position and the slitting knives and rollers for handling the feed web and the slit webs are mounted on a movable carriage which can be traversed towards or away from the shafts. The carriage includes two mounting beams, parallel to the shafts, on which lay-on rollers can be mounted for guiding or laying-on slit webs onto respective rewind reels carried by the shafts. Variable predetermined torques can be applied to the rewind reels and the lay-on rollers, and the movement of the carriage controlled, to implement any of the following winding geometries; centre winding, centre winding with lay-on, surface winding, centre surface winding and constant gap winding. The shafts are cantilevered so that reels can be unloaded from the ends of the shafts.
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Ashe Controls, Ltd.
Jillions John M.
Townsend and Townsend / and Crew LLP
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