Cover Story Engineer the future
coating for healthcare applications, carries out its cutting cell project for clean room, for laminated products, composed of three or four layers of products, such as plastics, nonwovens, knitted textiles, paper and silicone. The key issue of this project was to provide versatile and highly-productive equipment, with loading and unloading assistance, but that was also able to slit ALL the laminated product range and to rewind it in compact bobbins, with perfect tension and straight edges.
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poolex is involved in plastic industry with its Calemard brand for many decades now. From the beginning, the French company has been recognised by major plastic film converters for its very good understanding of customers’ products and processes to offer the best unwinding, slitting and rewinding technologies. Over time, thanks to the combined expertise in slitting and tension control, Calemard has reinforced its leadership in plastic industry.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Calemard sales director, Christian Montusclat explains: “Of course, last March, like many companies, our activity in the rubber industry declined but, surprisingly, only slightly. Moreover, this slow-down was counterbalanced by the explosion of demand for our nonwovens and textiles machineries; both for wipes and face mask markets. Today, we have restored the balance between these two activities. Another historical market for our company for many years now, is the the plastic films and composites market, where we have seen an impressive increase of new equipment and Retrofit demand.” Calemard has always been active in the adhesive or non-adhesive plastic industry, with its flexible slitter-rewinders and spooling lines. The company has built up a solid reputation by providing reliable equipment for fragile/ delicate products and a genuine capacity to engineer specific machinery. This expertise drives producers and converters to carry out their sensitive projects with Calemard. Thanks to this trust, the machine manufacturer opens up new markets by enhancing its range with new solutions of
Automation and handling assistance, High productivity turret winder, but also: l Cutting-edge digital spooling (especially adhesive products), l Slitting and rewinding very specific and demanding products (such as multi-layers, coated or green plastics)
RULE THE SPOOLS
With almost 3,000 narrow spooling heads in production worldwide, Calemard has been leading the business of digital spooling machines in many industries for several years. Thanks to its precise mastering and tension control, the company’s machines produce high-quality spools of narrow width strips. For several months, Spoolex integrated R&D engineers and process specialists have developed new and innovative technologies to control the quality of the edges of the spools. Spool edges are critical to ensure efficient downstream process and to ease handling operations. Thanks to its new rule, the machine is able to spool material with perfect stable flanges and without falling of the edges. This stability of finished spool presents lots of advantages, such as: allowing producing higher diameter spools, even with thick and narrow products – down to 2mm – but also, avoiding edge damage during handling and transportation, plus ensuring reliability and consistency of de-spooling in the final process. Calemard offers its technology on new equipment or as retrofit on existing spooling lines.
UNUSUAL PROJECTS
Recently, Calemard closed several deals for sensitive projects. A specialist in silicone
Another new product in Calemard’s range is the Roll-to-Roll machine for nonwovens or plastic films surface treatment and production of compact rolls. This is based on three modules: a shaftless unwinder for easy roll loading and no-shaft handling; a module for corona, plasma, etc. surface treatment; and a rewinding module with lay-on arm to apply the product on the rewinding core without air or wrinkles. During all the process, precise guiding and tension control systems, avoid product elongations and distortion, and anti-static devices remove static electricity before and after treatment for a perfect valorization of the final product. Last, but not least, is the development of a slitter-rewinder for Lactips a French company producer of the unique 100% bio-based and biodegradable material in the world. As a real cutting technology and tension control expert, Calemard took up the challenge. The critical point was the thickness variation of this new product. Indeed, there is no lamination at the end of the extrusion line, and therefore the product has some thickness irregularities. After several trials done in Spoolex’s laboratory, the company used all its know-how and process expertise to precisely defined the exact machine to meet this special product constraints.
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calemard.com
8
March 2021
convertermag.com
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