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During a reel change the reel weighs 40 to 300 kilograms – and yet the weight is the easier part. The hard part is the last one: holding the reel horizontal, aligning the core with the shaft and pushing it on without crushing the edge.
The reel stands on a pallet or lies in the reel store, has to be picked up, brought to the unwinder, raised to height and pushed onto the shaft. The core measures 76 or 152 millimetres; the tolerance when engaging is in the millimetre range. The edge is pressure-sensitive – a crushed reel edge runs off track in the machine and costs the whole reel. The change happens several times a shift, and the machine stands still while it lasts.
Gripping a reel from the outside presses it in – visible immediately on film, permanent on non-woven. The clean solution is an expanding mandrel carrying in the core: it is inserted, expanded and holds the reel positively. The outer surface stays untouched, and the reel hangs on exactly the axis it will later run on.
The lifting axis brings the reel to height, but the last millimetres decide. We give the pick-up two degrees of freedom: a tilt about the transverse axis to match the shaft and a fine rotation about the vertical axis. Both with detents, so the setting does not have to be found again at the next change. The operator then only pushes – and hits.
A reel change costs machine running time; anything that lengthens it gets bypassed. We therefore lay out the path from reel store to machine so that no transfer is needed, and calculate the change beforehand: pick up, travel, lift, align, push on. If the sum is longer than two people doing it, the design is wrong.
The jointed arm for millimetre-precise handling.
View device Lifting equipment · Lifting axesCompact power for vertical lifting.
View device Lifting equipment · Conveyor systemsThe whole area covered – in X and Y.
View deviceYes, through interchangeable mandrels or an expanding mandrel with a wide range. With widely differing reel weights it is still worth looking at the sizing: a mandrel for 300 kilograms is unnecessarily heavy for a 40-kilo reel and makes handling sluggish.
Then a tilting function is added: pick up standing, tilt through 90 degrees, engage horizontally. That is standard and mainly changes the moment in the design – tilted, the load acts with its centre of gravity further out, and the size follows from that.
Do not calculate through ergonomics but through downtime and scrap. Two changes a shift are rarely the trigger; but as soon as one crushed reel is lost per month or the change ties up two people, the investment usually pays for itself within a year.
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