An automatic alternative to hand stripping waste from sheets is available in the TXR blank separator from Kawahara Print & Packaging, of Japan (represented by An Corp (UK) in northern Europe). The first machine to be sold in – in the UK, for stripping sheets of horticultural plastics labels – is said to have increased productivity and reduced direct labour over a three-shift operation for a return on the investment within nine months.

The TXR has a lower bed of narrow rubber tipped pins that are automatically configured to the waste outline of a sheet design. An upper bed then uses the pins to exert pressure on a stack of sheets and separate the blanks from the waste. Movement of press and pin beds is controlled by a combination of electronic motors and compressed air said to ensure a smooth stripping action each cycle.

The only tooling required is a simple plastics template for each design to be stripped. These can be made by hand in 20min, or a software package can enable the template to be cut at the prepress stage by the CAD operator. The templates can be stored and reused. Makeready time is said to be 10min while the machine is registering a new design using the templates.

The TXR is designed to strip a stack of material around 80mm in depth – in under 30s, whatever the number of blanks on the sheet. The operator then removes them from the supporting pins to a conveyor or bench. The remnant waste is then scooped from the pin bed into an adjacent waste palletainer or conveyor. In this way up to 12,000 sheets of 400 micron cartonboard can be processed in one hour, it is claimed – or in the case of 50 micron in-mould labels, for example, a stack of over 1,000 sheets can be stripped in one cycle.

Several versions of the TXR machine are offered, to suit different sheet sizes. Although originally developed for folding carton production, its applications include plastics packaging and labels, microflute products, luxury packaging, point-of-sale and in-mould labels.



Contacts

An Corp (UK)
Tel: +44 (0)7738 923 551





External weblinks
Converting Today is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

An Corp (UK)