Huhtamaki

Helping to
Improve Quality

Huhtamaki (formerly Van Leer — Plastona), produce plastic film for food packaging. They have a number of machines which are basically of similar design, starting with an Extruder and Die Set leading into a Cooling/Polish Roll system and thereafter into accumulators for subsequent reeling into storage rolls, or onward processing into carton forming machines.

Forming the final carton or food container product is critically dependant upon the film quality and thickness, therefore Huhtamaki have introduced the latest gauging technology to monitor the machines for dimensional accuracy. The next step was to take control of the process and be able to offer adjustment or change to keep film thickness within tolerance from product to product.

The Cooling/Polishing Rolls are gearmotor driven as are the Haul-off Nip Rolls some distance down the machine.

Clark Components replaced both these drives with Closed Loop Vector Gearmotors plus AC Inverters and provided adjustment in the form of a Percentage Draw between the two. The Cooling Roll drive acts as the master and takes in the line speed reference and the Haul-offs act as a follower with the percentage draw/pull offset controlled by the machine operators.

The product quality improved dramatically and eliminated several problems Huhtamaki were having within the following film forming processes due to poor quality coming from the film process itself.