Over the last three years, EDF/Dong Fang Europe has invested heavily in designing the concept and manufacturing the casemakers of the future. The approach of the different projects has been – always based on ideas proven over many years – to see the future needs of our customers and the evolution of their market.

We have worked on concepts such as the cardboard transport system in high-speed machines; the efficiency of slotter and die-cutter units to eject the waste; the quick change of clichés and also of anilox rollers; dust management and even the cost of maintenance or spare parts needed by our customers.

In this regard and in order, I will try to list the most significant changes that make the Dong Fang group casemakers machines to be taken into account from now on.

First of all, the transport of scraps for machines 2400mm wide or more will continue to be done with vacuum bell system and tungsten coated wheels. Basically for two reasons: with these widths the transport register allows us +-0.2mm and the right left oscillation is practically null due to the considerable width of the plate. However, in small machines, the transport is done by vacuum, but with the help of toothed belts that ensure that we do not have belt slippage effects despite having installed dryers for printing that create dilatations of the rubber material.

Also servomotors and their use – basically to obtain better print registration – have been improved by using the technology of what I call “mini-motors”. Mini motors are small servo technology motors with a drive built into them. They are motors as small as 15x20x20cm that are directly connected to a gearbox depending on their function and position within the machine. But the particularity of this concept is that the same machine can have 40 or more motors ALL the same and configurable from the PLC. This concept drastically reduces the cost of maintenance and spare parts stock in the customer’s factory. In the particular case of the slotter unit, its size allows to build a slotter unit with multiple heads allowing much smaller slot distances and up to two creasing profiles on the same tool. This allows us to use different blades depending on the type of cardboard and paper used at any given time. The use of this concept also facilitates the ejection of the scrap thanks to a larger free space between tools.

On the other hand, we must consider that one of the most important problems in cardboard factories is the residual paper dust, both for the safety of the factory in terms of the potential risk of fire and for the cost of maintenance and cleaning associated with the equipment and machinery of the box manufacturing process. In this sense, the concept of air recirculation in the printing section of these machines is an unprecedented qualitative leap forward. In Dong Fang’s new casemakers, the slotting and die-cutting units are isolated from the printing and inserting units. In the printing area, the air used for the carton transport is sucked in and channelled to filters that collect the dust by centrifugation and send the air back to the lower part of the machine to suck the vacuum transport again. This technique provides several advantages, including the reuse of factory air by avoiding excess dust in the printing units and maintaining warm air in the printing area, which in turn helps to dry the inks and increase production speed.

Finally, EDF has also worked on the possibility of anilox changes in automatic and semi-automatic modes on both 2800mm and 1800mm presses. In particular the 924 HGL with pit allows the change of anilox rolls in a fast and efficient way.

All these changes in technology, together with the possibility of full remote control of these machines, make them a very flexible series of models for carton manufacturing.

Source: warak.com