Combined Application Technology for Carton Production Equipment

Carton production equipment is gradually transitioning from stand-alone machines to combined equipment and integrated equipment. At present, single-facer units, production lines, and printing, slotting and die-cutting machines have become key equipment for carton manufacturers; fully automatic die-cutting machines, fully automatic creasing machines, fully automatic folder-gluers, fully automatic box stitchers and other automated equipment are also increasingly becoming the equipment of choice for carton companies. However, some carton equipment manufacturers consider issues only from the angle of already having certain patented technologies of their own, thinking only about keeping those patented technologies confidential, which has also created new technical barriers and obstacles to enterprise development. If the relevant equipment in upstream and downstream processes were combined, it would make outstanding contributions to improving production efficiency, reducing process losses and lowering production costs for carton manufacturers. Below, the author, in light of the actual situation of carton manufacturers, offers some technical discussion on the combined application of carton production equipment.

Adding a preheating device to the single-facer unit is the key to solving insufficient preheating that affects board quality.

At present, as the state intensifies environmental supervision over heavily polluting enterprises such as paper mills through closures, suspensions, mergers and conversions, some paper companies have been shut down, creating a situation in which supply falls short of demand, and the price of base paper has soared. At the same time, however, the quality of base paper has dropped sharply, with problems such as poor tensile strength, high moisture content, low ring crush and high grammage emerging one after another. To maintain normal production, some carton manufacturers can only lower their purchasing standards, which creates difficulties in production losses and product quality control for the production process. On the other hand, it is also one of the key causes of product quality problems.

Now, the single-facer units that most carton equipment manufacturers provide to carton companies are still composed of a shafted mill roll stand, a single facer and a sheet cutter, with slow paper feeding that is time-consuming and labor-intensive; the tension balance of the base paper must be adjusted manually, resulting in large losses in the production process; the preheating rollers equipped on the single facer itself are relatively small, so the base paper is not fully preheated, causing the produced board to warp, affecting its use in subsequent processes, reducing production efficiency and affecting product quality. At the same time, it also increases production losses so that production costs cannot be brought down, directly affecting the ability of carton manufacturers to compete in the market and causing carton companies to lose their advantage in market competition.

For this reason, after the author's investigation, it is believed that carton equipment manufacturers can visit carton companies more often to learn about the situation and truly think for their own customers, and then they will design and produce carton production equipment that satisfies customers. Of course, some carton companies, after contacting equipment manufacturers, have carried out technical transformation and upgrading of their existing single-facer units to improve production efficiency and reduce losses, such as changing shafted mill roll stands to shaftless mill roll stands and changing cone-type chucks to automatic expanding chucks, all of which have achieved good results. If equipment manufacturers could make further efforts and adopt the approach of adding preheating rollers and preheating cylinders to solve the problem of insufficient preheating, would that be feasible?

The author believes that if an adjustable preheating device is added to the automatic paper lifting stand, the problem of board warping caused by the high moisture content of corrugated paper can be solved. Of course, if there is enough space in the workshop, two preheating cylinders can be installed, and a set of double preheaters can also be installed to work in conjunction with the small preheating rollers of the single facer itself, which can fundamentally solve this problem. After adequate preheating adjustment, the produced board has good flatness, moderate moisture and good corrugated stiffness; after facing, the board remains flat, and production efficiency will increase several times over.

A preliminary study of the combined use of some equipment in the printing and forming processes - the key to solving difficult product quality control.

At present, in terms of printing, most carton companies have adopted combined carton processing equipment for printing, slotting, longitudinal creasing and die-cutting, and production lines are also equipped with automatic creasing devices on thin-blade slitters. However, due to the influence of the properties of some raw materials and also the influence of design problems of the creasing devices on the production lines themselves, the quality of creasing on the production line does not meet requirements and is not resistant to folding. In addition, some customers specifically demand crease lines made with a creasing machine, otherwise they will reject the goods.

For this reason, carton manufacturers also have to specially purchase creasing machines for manual creasing, which not only increases labor costs but also triggers a series of chain reactions: increased process losses, increased power consumption, increased quality risks, reduced work efficiency, extended delivery times and increased customer complaints, leaving carton manufacturers miserable. Some enterprises have used fully automatic creasing equipment, and labor costs, process losses, power costs and quality risks have declined relatively, but the decline in labor costs and the like is relative, and the reduction is sometimes not obvious. For example, some enterprises use a fully automatic creasing machine that can replace several manual creasing machines, but operating this one fully automatic creasing machine requires at least

person(s). If this set of automatic creasing equipment were combined with printing and slotting equipment, then even these

persons would not be needed; after the board is printed, the box-gluing or box-stitching operation can be carried out. How efficient that would be. I remember that once, when the author attended a carton equipment exhibition, a foreign carton equipment manufacturer introduced a kind of production equipment integrated from printing to strapping, so that the entire production process is divided into two parts: one part is the production line part, which outputs qualified corrugated board; the other part is the printing-to-strapping part, whose output is the strapped qualified finished product. Of course, for domestic carton equipment manufacturers to produce this kind of equipment may be a technical difficulty, and product quality control is also a problem, but producing relatively simple equipment may not be difficult.

For this reason, after investigating and learning about several surrounding carton manufacturers, the author believes that domestic carton equipment manufacturers can, through alliances between enterprises and by means of technology or capital equity participation, produce production equipment suited to the actual conditions of domestic carton manufacturers, such as combining fully automatic creasing equipment with printing, slotting and die-cutting equipment in a matched configuration to produce an integrated printing, slotting, die-cutting and creasing machine. Although the length of the equipment will increase, in actual production it will reduce one production process, reduce unnecessary process turnover and reduce unnecessary waste of human resources. The problems mentioned above, such as increased process losses, increased power consumption and increased quality risks - for example, missing a crease line, skewed crease lines or extra crease lines - will no longer occur, and problems such as reduced work efficiency, extended delivery times and increased customer complaints will no longer be problems.

At present, if the slotting section of the printing and slotting equipment used by carton companies is a device with automatic adjustment, the hand-hole punch device provided still has unusable ranges, which affects the performance of the equipment's functions and at the same time limits the use of the equipment and the space for expanding the enterprise's business. As is well known, today's packaging boxes are not limited to transport packaging but also have the function of sales packaging, such as some liquor packaging boxes, dairy product packaging boxes and instant noodle packaging boxes. The packaging boxes of these products not only have a transport function but also a sales function, playing a role in introducing the product and enhancing the product image.

According to the author's investigation, the packaging of the above products is becoming increasingly miniaturized. Taking liquor as an example, on the market today

bottled products are everywhere; their purpose is product packaging carefully designed by enterprises and merchants to make things convenient for consumers. Such product packaging boxes require a relatively narrow box face width. If hole punching, tear lines and other requirements are needed, once the hand-hole punch is installed, the equipment cannot meet the requirements. What is the reason? Mainly because the design of the equipment is not reasonable enough: for example, after the width of the slitting knife holder plus the width of the automatic adjustment device, the width of the knife holder and the adjustment device is not less than

value="8" unitname="cm">

, and the knife holders and adjustment devices on both sides added together are between

value="16" unitname="cm">

If it is

the box layout of boxed liquor cartons at

value="30" unitname="cm">

or so, then the net width in the middle is insufficient. If holes or tear lines are required, then the equipment is unusable, and therefore an additional production process must be added.

To solve these problems, the author believes that first, the processing materials of the knife holders and the automatic adjustment devices should be changed; second, the design of the automatic adjustment devices should be changed, that is, adjusted. From the above problems, it can be seen that first, there are defects in the design of the equipment, and there are many unreasonable aspects of the design; second, there is a major technical

problem in the machining technology of equipment manufacturers, and the most telling evidence is that the knife holders are too wide; third, the quality of materials used by equipment manufacturers is insufficient, for example, the hardness of some steel parts does not meet requirements. In short, when producing and designing equipment, equipment manufacturers should fully consider the actual needs of carton manufacturers and the development trends of the carton industry, and design and produce carton processing equipment that satisfies carton manufacturers.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-369997.html