Reel & Roll Handling
Investment in slitter unloading brings safety and speed improvements
W
hen fl exible packaging manufacturer, Parkside Flexibles were looking to make improvements to the unloading of
rolls from slitter/rewinders at their UK Head Offi ce and factory in Normanton, West Yorkshire, they turned to reel & roll handling specialists, Weston Handling Ltd, for a solution. Like many fl exible packaging manufacturers, Parkside have a variety of slitter/rewinder machines from diff erent manufacturers, which produce a wide range of roll sizes from their slitters. As with many slitter/rewinders, slit rolls are typically transferred from the rewind shafts onto pivoting unload tree, where they sit while the operator re-cores the rewind shafts and starts the rewind operation again.
From that point on the methodology of getting the rolls off the unload shafts, and palletised for shipping varies greatly and may include an intermediate step of being wrapped or bagged. Small rolls that are easy
to manhandle, may be handled by hand, but this can require a lot of twisting, turning and bending, which can cause health and safety issues such as repetitive strain injuries. Heavier rolls may require two-man handling, duplicating the above health issues; or the introduction of lifting and manipulating equipment for the rolls. Both scenarios would have the eff ect of adding additional steps and reducing productivity.
Stephen Weston, owner and managing director of Weston Handling, has spent almost 5 decades in the paper, fi lm, foil, packaging, printing and converting industries and recognised this problem many years ago. Over two decades, he has developed a unique range of dedicated Slitter Unload Trucks, (SUT’s), capable of unloading and palletising individual or multiple reels, quickly and safely, virtually eliminating manual handling stresses and strains. Weston visited the Parkside factory and working with a group of managers and operators, they surveyed each machine, the environment around them and with the input of the most experienced operators, decided that the best solution would be a Weston Handling, single ‘V’ Slitter Unload Truck, (the VSUT).
“The V-SUT truck was developed to unload one or all the reels from each one of the slitter/ rewinder’s unload tree shafts, in turn, then rotate the reel stack to vertical where the reels can be lifted off and palletised vertically, using a crane
mounted Vertical Reel Lifter, (VRL), that can pick up one roll or a stack of rolls, by gripping them in the core.” explains Stephen Weston. Weston Handling have supplied single ‘V’ and double ‘V’ cradle SUT’s, (two ‘V’ cradles side by side, that can offl oad all the reels from a Slitter unload tree that rotates the shafts to parallel), for a wide range of Slitter manufacturers, including Atlas, Titan, Deacro Kampf, with some utilising a separate standalone swing Jib-crane and hoist to lift the VRL and transfer the rolls from the SUT cradle to a pallet. Whereas some SUT’s have an extended mast, onto which a Jib-crane is fi tted that can carry a hoist powered by the truck, to raise and lower the VRL.
Whether the Jib-crane is standalone, or built onto the truck, the result is the same; the operator can unload and palletise a slitter run, with virtually no physical stress or strain. Parkside operators were able to see this for themselves when Weston took a party of them to another customer in Yorkshire that had been using a VSUT for the past eight years, which had improved productivity by over 300 per cent and virtually eliminated physical handling of the rolls.
www.convertermag.com October 2025 19
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42
