This course is designed for operators/technical people responsible for most any type of web machine.  However, foreman, managers, mechanical and electrical maintenance, customer service can also benefit from the course.  The only prerequisite is some technical aptitude and enough job experience to be familiar with the parts of your machines basic functions and common web/roll defects.

What you will learn: 
• Eliminate wrinkles, baggy webs and apply effective spreading
• Eliminate winding defects
• Design and maintain web machinery, especially rollers
• Design and maintain control systems for tension, nip, guiding and more
• Design web products and processes for more reliable manufacturing
• Troubleshoot a variety of web, web handling and converting issues
• Understand why the web world does what it does

1 Introduction

In this module you will learn why we study web handling:  to be able to run webs as fast as possible with a minimum of waste.  You should be able to recognize web handling related waste including wrinkling, winding, path control (guiding), web breaks and more; as well as what factors can be used to reduce these troubles.

2-4 Rollers

Rollers are the building blocks of all web manufacturing and converting machinery.  Rollers perform vital functions of web routing, path and tension control.  While most rollers are intended to be in traction, insufficient wrap, low friction surfaces and air entrainment all may conspire to allow the web to break loose at which time both path and tension control is lost.  However, some elements, such as folding bars and pans, are intended to be in sliding.  Other elements, such as floater dryers, are intended to support the web on an air cushion. It is the task of the designer, process trouble-shooter and maintenance to ensure the proper mode is maintained at all times across the entire width of the machine.  It is also necessary for good machine and process performance to be sure that rollers are sized and maintained properly.  In this module you will learn how to:

-       Determine whether a roller is in a state of traction, sliding or floating and how to it

-       Know if a nip is needed and why it is to be avoided if possible

-       Size rollers (width and diameter) to avoid deflection related problems

-       Determine how close roller alignment needs to be

5-6 Tension and Drive Control

Controlling tension is vital for minimizing waste and delay because many if not most web troubles are tension sensitive.  We must first choose a tension range for our machinery and then a tension setpoint for a particular grade and section of the machine.  We must also determine how much tension variability is tolerable.  The four most common forms of tension control are: draw/speed, torque, dancer and load cell.  Each has many design and maintenance details that must be attended to for good process health.  No less challenging is the programming of drives.  While the full-featured name brand systems are impressive in capability, hardware alone will not ensure good results.  Our industry faces a crisis due to the lack of the specialized skills necessary to program and tune web drives.  A consequence is that a drive upgrade may at times actually degrade performance. In this module you will learn how to

-      Determine what is the best tension to set on any web and machine

-      Determine which is the best tension control mode:  load cells, dancers, draw or torque

-      Determine if a drive point is running properly and if not, what is the probable reason

7-8 Nip Control and Nip Applications

Transport nips, such as pull rollers and winder lay on rollers, are used to move the web through machinery.  Much more interesting are process nips that form and convert the web such as calendering, coating, laminating, pressing, printing and so on.  While all of these nips appear quite different, they share the same underlying physics.  Also, they share the same goal in that a uniform web product will require a uniform nip. There are many ways the nip can be nonuniform such as due to roller imprecision, bending deflection, loading system problems and so on.  It is the task of the designer, process owner and maintenance to make sure that their nips are uniform.  Finally, each specific application such as rubber covering, calendering, laminating and winding have concerns beyond the physics common to all.  In this module you will learn:

-       Where nips are used and why

-       The stresses in between a pair of nipped rollers

-       How to control nips via load control or position control

-       How to determine the quality of nip control

-       How to determine the best roller cover hardness

-       How to combat curl

-       What are the many effects of nips on winding rolls

9 Wrinkling

Wrinkling is common to thin materials of most any chemistry on most any machine.  As such, wrinkling may be overall the number one cause of waste in the web industries. Until recently there was no organization or science applied to this area.  Now we are able to easily diagnose major wrinkling cases based on visual appearance alone.  The most common cases are the Machine Direction Trough wrinkle, the Diagonal Shear wrinkle and the Baggy Web.  Within the major cases are sub cases dealing with excess width, crookedness or nonuniform forming/deforming respectively.  Recognizing the sub case allows one method to wrinkle reduction, namely, remove the root cause.  In this module you will learn:

-       How to diagnose the major case of wrinkling using only observation

-       How to diagnose the subcase of wrinkling

-       How the subcase determines which root cause factors matter for that wrinkle type

-       How to size roller alignment and deflection standards to avoid wrinkling

-       What to do about baggy webs

10 Spreading

Spreading is used most often to prevent or remove wrinkles.  It may also be used to open slits or increase web width.  There are many types of spreaders ranging from modest to so powerful that the web can be torn. We must select the best spreader type for any particular application.  Spreaders choices include:  the compliant cover, concave, bowed roller, bent pipe, dual element, expander, edge pulls and so on.  However, each has important application details that must be attended to because it is far easier to wrinkle on a spreader than it is to spread.  Also important is the concept of designing tolerance in machinery with the concept of flattening.  Finally, the ability to audit a machine for flatness, wrinkling and spreading is a vital web process skill.

In this module you will learn:

-       Applications for spreading including wrinkle reduction, opening gaps after slitting and others

-       Which spreaders are more powerful and which are less

-       Why applying a spreader with too much or too little power can be problematic

-       Why traction is essential to many spreader types

-       Why bagginess is almost never treatable with a spreader

11 Guides

In this module we cover path control such as why a web does not travel in a perfectly straight line and how to move it to a required position if needed.  Here we cover the major guide classes including steering, displacement, canted roller and edge pulls.

12 Slitting

Slitting is not, strictly speaking, a web handling topic.  However, it is so important to web manufacturing and converting that we include it in this course.  Here we cover the major slitting methods including razor, score and shear.  Emphasis is on cut quality factors.

Cost & Access:
$699 + GST (Appita Member)
$899 + GST (Individual Non-Member)
Access via user login
Access for 3 months

Site Licence:
$3500 + GST
Unlimited users
Access via computer IP address or user login
Access to free additional resources

All told you have more than 1,000 pages and more than ½ million words! All are searchable and keyworded. These documents cover must-know subjects of web-handling, rollers, tension and nip control, wrinkling, spreading, slitting, guiding, converting operations such as printing, coating, laminating, heating and cooling as well as industrial problem solving techniques of a wide variety. If you need to go beyond my own writings, you will find that the RoisumLibrary indexes nearly everything else ever written in the web handling areas.

Creative Thinking in Converting

An unpublished book that followed Critical Thinking in Converting (TAPPI PRESS, 2002).

Roisum Best of Index

This spreadsheet has sheets for my personal works including books, conference papers, Web Words columns, Web Wise columns, WebHandling Blog, Web101 teaching modules and Web201 YouTube clips. All are dated and keyworded and searchable. Merely click on the appropriate tab at the bottom to navigate between the various databases.

Roisum Blog

This is the text of more than 1,300 AIMCAL WebHandlingBlog posts written over more than 15 years. Fair use with attribution here would include my name as well as AIMCAL.

Roisum Dictionary

Defines some 1,000 technical words used in our web-industries including aliases.

Roisum Library

A keyworded and searchable list of some 4,000 articles, books, conference papers, columns, theses and other published material by the famous, infamous and not so famous authors of web handling related material. This is most everything ever published on web-handling subject except for patents.

Roisum Web Wise

37 of my columns from AIMCAL’s Converting Quarterly. Fair use with attribution here would include my name as well as AIMCAL.

Roisum Web Words

190 of my columns from the now deceased Converting Magazine.

WHH911

An emergency help guide with links that you are welcome to share as you like.

Web Handling and Converting