Some useful Corrugated Industry terms explained

In the following article, we explain some of the terms you might hear us refering to in conversation about machinery and processes.

Single Face Rewinder
This is best done as a separate specialist operation with a single facer, reelstands and rewinder with appropriate handling equipment, in the vicinity of the reelstore, boiler and starch plant and despatch.
However, it can be done in the corrugator line when required as an occasional intermittent product. In the latter case it is installed at the very beginning of the line and means are provided to bring the single face web back from the inclined conveyor, on to a bridge conveyor which festoons it away from its normal flow direction, to the rewinder. Such rewinding was quite a crude, menial and non-continuous operation until 1996 when Pivab of Sweden adapted a continuous running automatic rewinder they had developed for other industrial web products to the corrugated application.

Laminator
Laminators are available as semi-automatic sheet to sheet machines – for single face laminating, spot and full labelling, spot and full chipboard laminating, dual label mounting and windowing – through to full in-line laminators akin to a short, narrow width corrugator designed specifically for purpose. The concept in each case is to laminate a clear film window or previously printed (Offset or Gravure) top substrate to single face, corrugated board of any flute profile or a knocked down box.
Most modular machines offer the facility to install a basic machine that can be upgraded to full reel to sheet or in-line operations to cope with expanding markets. A typical ‘top of the range’ in-line laminator will consist of a cassette type single facer group, double reel stands, splicers and web conditioning devices installed in-line with the laminator for web to web and sheet to web laminating. The line is typically completed with an inverter, a fully automatic stacker and pallet handling system. These lines are normally around 1.6m in width and run at about 150m per minute producing up to 10,000 sheets per hour. Ongoing development of these in-line laminators includes improved feeders, cut-off knife with helical cut, AC drives throughout the machine and remote modem access to the electronics for troubleshooting.
There is a growing demand for high quality laminated fine flute sheets. The cold set laminating process results in flat sheets with perfect formation of even the smallest flute profile, double faced with a high quality offset or flexo printed liner.

 

Labelling
This is the application of a quality, normally offset litho printed ‘label’ on to one or more panels of a box prior to folding and gluing or to a knocked down box. They can transform a plain brown box into an appealing display package relatively inexpensively. Close registration is important as the corrugated sheets and the labels are usually fed into the machine from different hoppers and glued with a PVA adhesive.

 

Windowing
Similar to labelling only somewhat more intricate, is the application of transparent film windows on the inner surface of a box to provide a display pack within which the contents are visible.

 

 

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