How to Make Good Performance Laminated Board?
The flute laminator machine is very useful to make paperboard, especially the printed paper pasting on corrugated board (2ply/open flute), at carton factory.
For example, at offset print pack factory, most of them have the high performance offset printer such as Heidelberg, KBA, Manroland, Komori, Mitsubish, etc, which can do very colorful and amamzing printing on coating paperboard. The paperboard can make nice inner carton, but if we want to do good protection on inside goods, the paperboard performance is not enough. Then the solution is combined the beautiful printed paper and corrugated board together. The open flute (2ply) corrugated board is necessary and available to get from automatic corrugated board plant, or buy a new 2ply corrugator to make it at workshop.
At the old days, the lamination job is done by manual, like manual gluing on 2ply corrugated board then put the printed paper then press it to wait for the glue dry properly, then go to diecutter and gluer to make carton. Although this process is still happened at some countries, we need to move ahead to make it at efficiency way. Then the flute laminator machine is coming up. At the beginning that semi auto flute laminator is quite helpful at small quantity job if the labor cost is not hight. But the most suitable way is using the intelligent high speed flute laminator, like our GW1450L or GW1450LP or GW1450BP model, which is order changed in 2~3 minutes, and running speed from 10,000 sheet/hour to 20,000 sheet/hour.
Actually, before the intelligent high speed flute laminator become popular, there is automatic flute laminator with 6000 sheet/hour speed avaiable at the market. But the job set up time will take more than 10 minutes, and glue performance is hard to control, and lamination performance is quite hard to modify especially while the 2ply paperboard is warp or too dry, etc.
The innovation on flute laminator to make the high performance laminated sheet easily!
1st improvement is the accuracy. The tranditational flute laminator machine is using the chain with hook to do the front side lamination alignment. Some of them do not have the side guide, which can not make the sheet alignment on left and right side. This will have one issue that the printed paper need to make much bigger then the bottom 2ply corrugated board to make sure that the bottom sheet will not exposing. But it will cause to using more paper and cost will be increased. At the new flute laminator, we are using the full servo drive and sensors to do the front side alignment with side guides to make sure that perfect laminated accuracy 0.5mm. Not only improve the precission, but also save paper cost.
2nd innovation is the speed. The old flute laminator is running about 5000 sheet/hour. But it is not enough for big production. To save time on production, we increase the production speed upto 16000 sheet/hour to greatly improve the capacity. Our flute laminator have strong structure design for long use life time. While run the high speed cotinuously, it is quite hard for workers to collect the laminated sheet manually. Then we can innovate a flip flop stacker to make the perormance to support the production team.
3rd innovation is the operation. The tranditional setup still take too much times, we need to add more automation, and make it intelligent operation. Our laminator master is one key set up, which you can set the data of sheet size, sheet thickness, glue consumption, flute type, etc at touch screen. Once the data is input, the pre loader, top feeder, bottom feeder, glue roll, press roll, transmission belt,etc will automatic to be ready in 30 seconds, then operation can load the paper to start the production in 2~3 minutes.
4th innovation is the maintenance. The machine performance is quite reliance on maintenance. Operator or maintenance team may not on time to do maintenance which will casue inside bearing or gear wear out. Our machine have automatic lubrication system and dual bearing design which make mainteance free.
To make high performance board is required to understand well the process too.
For example, at summer time, the temperature is high, normally the mositure of printed cardboard is much higher than the corrugated sheet, if we do not do the balance, then we will have so many crazy warp laminated sheet after pasting. Even we do up side down stacking, which can solve little bit issue. But the most improtant is to do the balance on process. Like at our machine have the water roll, while bottom sheet pasting, the paperboard mositure can be increase little more to more close to top paper. We have visited many customers' plant, but at old structrue machine do not have the water roll which operator can not use this way to make better performance.
At the meantime, the glue formula is very important too. If the glue visosity is too sparse or too dense, it will effect a lot lamination speed or flatness. For example, you may face the problem that there are mold sports appear on the cardboard after certain period at store, etc.
Above all information for your reference, hope it is helpful for you to make the good performance laminated board. We have focused on flute laminator more then 15 years, over 2600 sets installation in the world. If you are interested in our service or inquiry of flute laminator, please kindly tell us, we are willing to do our best assistance.