Motor in drums sensed for hard winding

By putting motors inside roll winding drums for slitter converters, it is now possible to reduce the widths of the arms used to support them from typically 450mm to 100mm. This is expected to lead to major reductions in waste generated when initially 12m to 20m wide rolls of film or other packaging materials are unwound, slit, and re-wound into marrower rolls. Dr Lee Fenney of Infranor told Eureka that engineers have been trying to make narrower arms for many years, without resorting to belt and pulley drives, but having direct drives had previously always meant having motors sticking out of the sides. Infranor has been working with Sigmala, based in Ipswich, to develop a suitable product. Sigmala designed the arm and Infranor designed a special motor to go in the drum. Dr Fenney said that a crucial part of the development was the diagnostic and temperature sensing facilities available for use with Infranor motors, allowing them to be run hard inside the drums, without risk of their overheating. The development will be on show on the Infranor stand, C19, in the Machine Building Show to be held alongside mtec (more details on page 1) at the NEC on February 16th and 17th. Sigmala roll drive arm Infranor