Knife Holder Is All-Electric

Published: July 21, 2008

LINCOLNSHIRE, UK | Sigmala knife holders replace conventional pneumatic controls and manual setup with electrically powered embedded servo motors in the company’s 50-mm-wide SL50 slitter. Claimed the first to introduce all-electric and servo motors throughout, manufacturer now can offer adaptive slippage compensation (ASC) that monitors knife wear and adjusts the side-load automatically to prevent slippage between upper and lower knife blades. An encoder built into the traverse unit positions and guides the knife holder along the backplate to pinpoint knife position to 1,000th/in. (0.025 mm) at 2 in./sec (50 mm/sec). Upper knife holder has three embedded servomotors, servo drives, and microprocessors to control the up/down (accurate to 0.25 mm), side-load (accurate to one Newton), and cant “slitting angle” (accurate to 0.1 degree). ASC runs in threshold mode so that the point at which slippage occurs increases the side-load automatically to a slightly higher value to ensure the slitter runs with the smallest possible side-load to reduce wear on both knife blades. Visit: www.sigmala.com.