Without sacrificing product quality, large industry-leading companies require their production output to meet market demands. As a key movement initiator, rollers represent the core of the metal, pulp, paper, printing, tire/rubber, and carpet industry’s continuous production mechanism.
Throughout the production line, the medium or web’s continuous linear movement results from individual rolls’ appropriate rotation. Companies often incorrectly perceive the rotation speed or other attributes as the cause for an unfit product, but that’s not entirely true. No matter how much a technician adjusts the roller’s rotational speed by fine-tuning the electric motor’s rpm, product defects won’t be alleviated without proper alignment.
Proper Alignment is the bottom line
The fact is, high speeds indeed evoke high friction between the wire and roller. However, the force of friction causes trouble only when rolls are not precisely aligned. The increased wear on load points leads to a decrease in product quality and shorter lifespan of the equipment. Those load points are prone to failure due to uneven friction distributed along more than one axis. The speed of misaligned rollers may be the same, but the distance that two edges of the web shall pass is different due to improper positioning. The overwhelming stress acting upon the web often causes paper and other soft materials to rupture or reduces a stiff material’s quality.
The parallel mounting of the rolls is an essential activity that ensures the mechanical parts’ longevity, such as bearing and wire on the one side. On the other side, the precise parallel roll mounting allows equal stretching force upon the web, ensuring its uniform quality. The accurate alignment of multiple rollers in a piece of machinery or along the production line is a time-demanding job due to a need to determine every roll position independently. Manufacturers know that those types of excessive downtimes are very costly. Utilizing new techniques and technologies to maximize scheduled maintenance shutdowns represents an essential part of business optimization.
The state of art roll alignment technology
Taking manual readings and data recordings presents the most time-consuming portions in traditional alignment measurements. The Peak RGA service from Prüftechnik completes roll alignment faster than is possible with any other method.
The heart of the Peak RGA service is our ParAlign tool, which easily handles complicated alignment jobs. ParAlign uses a unique ring laser gyroscope technology regularly found in the aerospace industry. By leveraging a three-dimensional coordinate system that is relative to the roller’s position, Peak RGA provides high precision measurements.
To completely resolve bottlenecks caused by roller maintenance, Prüftechnik takes measurements, coordinates with teams for execution, and provides a visual report all on the same day.