GOEBEL IMS’s OPTIWIND: high-technology to provide the converting industry with top productivity and flexibility
Flexibility is a growing priority for the varied application spheres in the converting industry. Being flexible is now a must to compete at the top levels of a market in which increasingly diverse and pressing demands are emerging, requiring the best rapid responses at attractive prices. Of course, flexibility must start from the technological features with which the converter is equipped: the machines must have cutting-edge, top-notch automation levels to allow a smooth, efficient orchestration of the levers of production for quality and speed.
Responsive to these demands, GOEBEL IMS is launching its new OPTIWIND model, a slitter rewinder for paper and board, shaftless unwinding on lay-on rollers.
GOEBEL IMS, a brand of the IMS TECHNOLOGIES industrial group, is the union of two industrial stalwarts — the German Goebel companies and the Italian IMS companies — which jointly draw on over 170 years in the converting industry.
Sharing history, skills, and values, GOEBEL IMS is led by an unwavering drive to innovate and meet the changing needs of the market, creating technological solutions that ensure enduring precision, speed, and accuracy to add high value to its customers’ production cycle.
GOEBEL IMS builds slitter rewinders to convert paper and board for the tobacco, plastic films, aseptic packaging, and other special materials, and is organized into business units by product type to ensure highly specialized technology and support.
OPTIWIND is GOEBEL IMS Division Unit’s flagship technology for converting paper. The machine can slit and rewind reels up to 5 meters wide, slitting them and winding them in finished reels with widths as small as 70 mm. Within these parameters, the production possibilities that the machine can provide are clearly manifold: OPTIWIND responds to the needs of an extensive array of applications that process and convert paper and cardboard for the food, packaging, paper, graphics, and tobacco industries, and many other sectors.
OPTIWIND’s key technical-production features include:
- Wide range of paper grades (25-200 gsm)
- Width of mother rolls up 5 m
- Shaftless and tambour unwinding
- Shaftless surface rewinding
- Rewind diameter up to 1500 mm
- Minimum slitting width 70 mm
- Production speed up to 1500 m/min.
GOEBEL IMS is available to customize OPTIWIND on the customer’s specific technical needs.
The machine was designed and built to fit within a 4.0 industrial setting, featuring extremely high automation levels for main functions and ancillary ones alike. To maintain high production levels with complex technical specifications, automation is fundamental and must be wide-ranging to optimize the production cycle while minimizing the risk of human error.
Key automations implemented on OPTIWIND include:
- Core loading
- Material glueing for automatic start
- Material feeding
- Positioning of knives and counterknives
- Web edge control
- Transversal cutting of material
- Final taping of the reels to simplify handling
- Unloading of finished reels
- Speed adjustment according to detected vibrations
The machine also features high-level process digitalization, in keeping with the specific features of industry 4.0 protocol. The entire production process is tracked and managed through an HMI made by the company. A full-fledged digital portal guides operators through the control and regulation of the machines’ electric, mechanical, and production parameters, letting them optimally calibrate, manage, and monitor all production levers. With versions on tablets and smartphones, customers can draw on this tool to optimize their production. This advanced control tool connects with the customer’s ERP to let them situate slitting and rewinding within their complete industrial process and better manage production input and output.
The machine can also connect to the GOEBEL IMS service headquarters to diagnose and resolve problems, including remotely.