Pulltab Manufacturing Automation

CAN'T BE DONE?
WELL - WE DID IT!

PROJECT EXAMPLE:

Automation of Pull Tab Lamination Process

THEIR BILL - $200,000 BUT A FAILURE

The 'they' in this example is the engineering group that we replaced, following $200,000 worth of their initial work that had to be scrapped.

Upon learning of our plans they threw the "THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE" gauntlet down.

CHALLENGE IS WHERE THE FUN IS

What 'they' were not taking into account was that we had been accepting impossible projects and hurling gauntlets back for decades, eventually 40 years. We love a challenge and are selective in the projects we accept, for that reason. If there is no challenge in a proposal we will pass, otherwise, where's the fun?

TOLERANCES = SPLIT SECONDS AND THOUSANDTHS OF AN INCH

This challenge required liquid adhesive with a dry time of 1 second, used as a printing medium and printing a gridwork of 1/16" wide lines across a 24" X 32" parent sheet registered to within a few thousandths of an inch repeatability, bonding to a same size security sheet perfectly aligned within a few thousandths of an inch, laminating at the rate of 60 per minute with a machine cycle life of 20,000,000 sheets. The adhesive film thickness on transfer cylinder was 1 to 1-1/2 thousandths.

INGENUITY PUT TO THE TEST

Among numerous first-ever inventions, the system required an adhesive washing system (world's first) that would instantly auto-wash the print mat the second a run was completed. Laminator required no shift-end clean-ups and last we heard, had passed the 200,000,000 laminations mark.

FORMIDABLE UNDERTAKING

What intrigued us was that nothing like it had ever been done before. "Can you do it?", they asked. "We can", we said - and did, royally. When finished, the machine with one operator, out produced thirteen workers and saved an additional $200,000 annually in reject losses.