UEB $9M plant on stream

Press, 13 December 1982, Page 37

UEB $9M plant on stream

UEB Industries. Ltd, has brought- into operation the world's most modern cardboard corrugating machine in a S9M installation project in its Auckland fibrecase branch at Mangere. The commissioning of the huge corrugator. which is slightly more than 100 m long, doubles the plant's production capacity. It substantially reduces wastage of materials, and produces a higher quality of board consistently because of advanced controls at key points of the manufacturing process. The Japanese machine is highly computerised. It can be programmed to produce 100 orders ahead, and the machine changes involved in these are then handled automatically, saving both production time and waste. The UEB plant’s planning office marshals its orders to get like with like, the primary aim being, within each board grade, to make use of the full width of the machine as well as minimising paper trim. Once scheduled in this way the orders are keyed into the corrugator’s computer and manufacture proceeds automatically. The machine produces cor-

rugated cardboard by the fingerless system. This is the highest technology available and the UEB installation is the first outside Japan to use it. To reduce noise to acceptable levels, UEB's engineering division designed and built sound enclosures for key Sections of the corrugator. The company believes it is the first machine of its kind in the world to be equipped in this way. Maximum board width produced is 2.2 m and the machine has a top speed of 250 m a minute, compared with the 150 m possible on the corrugator it is replacing at the plant. One of the biggest benefits of the new corrugator is that it can run continuously at normal operating speed. This is achieved by automatic splicing stations where the end of one reel of paper is spliced to the new reel without having to slow the machine. On older corrugators up to 50m of board production could be lost or damaged while the unit was slowed down for splicing and then speeded up again. Automatic splicing also reduces waste.