Hanover Foils, LLC, a flexible packaging converting company located in Ashland, VA, specializes in coated foil and film and foil laminations for a variety of industries including food and beverage and pharmaceutical, medical and nutraceutical. They run several process lines in their 80,000 sq/ft facility including rotogravure printing/coating, laminating, specialty rewinding and coil slitting.

Hanover Foils specializes in coated foil and film and foil laminations for specialty packaging

Hanover Foils specializes in coated foil and film and foil laminations for specialty packaging

When they began having severe wrinkling issues in one of their spooling/embossing lines, as well as continuous tracking issues in their two-unit coater line, they were referred to OASIS Alignment Services for help.

Hanover Foils initially hired OASIS to inspect the spooler/embosser because they were experiencing an excessive amount of waste due to wrinkling when running thin gauge foil. The spooler/embosser is approximately 20’ long and 6’ wide and contains 12 rolls. Using optical alignment tooling, the OASIS team inspected the embosser unit and unwind stand for parallelism to the rewind. The survey showed that there was severe misalignment between the embosser, rewind and unwind stand. This information was discussed with the Hanover Foil team and it was determined that a complete equipment alignment should be performed. An alignment tolerance of 0.003” was established and all rolls within the line were then set to this tolerance. Since the realignment, this line runs with little to no waste due to wrinkling.

Because of the positive results generated on the spooler/embosser, Hanover Foils asked OASIS to inspect their two-unit coater line. This line consists of two coater units and ovens and is made up of 60 rolls. The line had been experiencing product tracking issues in the first coater oven for a long period of time. So much so, that the first coater unit and oven could not be used. In order to run the line, a roll was added to the machine to bypass the first coater oven. They were able to run quality product, but were running the product through the process twice. In addition to the time it took to run the process, the energy consumption from this one line was exorbitant. An OASIS team was hired to inspect and align the line to a tolerance of 0.005”. Again using optical alignment tooling, OASIS engineers inspected the entire line and performed the realignment.

After the realignment project, Howard Hager, President of Hanover Foils, sent the following:

“We have been up and running for a full day now – the work that OASIS performed has helped tremendously. This is the first time we have ever been able to run the full machine without issue. Thank you to the OASIS team for a job well done!” 
Hanover Foils Howard Hager

Howard Hager, President of Hanover Foils in Ashland, VA

For more information on how the precision alignment of YOUR coating/laminating equipment can help to improve operating efficiency and reduce waste, please contact us for a site visit. Be sure to subscribe to our blog industry news, technology updates and more!

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