March 2019

58 n BEARINGS, BELTS AND CHAIN March 2019 www.drivesncontrols.com Winding up with a longer lifetime T he machines at Sonoco Consumer Products’ plant in Mechelen, Belgium, that produce cardboard tubes for the food industry, hardly ever stand still. The Belgian company is part of the Sonoco Group, which employs 20,000 people in 33 countries, manufacturing paper tubes and cores, as well as many other packaging products. Because production time is of the essence, every minute saved in machine maintenance counts. Sonoco uses special spiral-winding machines to produce paper cores and a key component in their operation is the tube- winding belt. This belt applies pressure to the product to achieve the required level of adhesion between the individual layers of paper. This application which requires strong tension, high flexibility and a firm grip, as well as abrasion resistance, poses a unique set of challenges for the design of the belts. Because of the winding machines’ high production speeds, high levels of stress are exerted on the tube-winding belts. The polyamide belts that Sonoco used previously had to be replaced frequently, incurring significant maintenance costs and machine downtimes. Sonoco contacted Bogaert Transmission, a local business with more than 35 years of experience in transmission and conveying systems. Working with experts from the industrial belts manufacturer Nitta, Bogaert’s service teams identified the rigidity of the belt material as the reason for the high wear rates. To increase the belts’ service lives, they recommended using a belt developed specifically for tube- winding applications. The Zeroseam ZS-TWL-42H belt has a strong, seamless surface made of structured rubber, which is combined with a strong cord tension layer to produce a highly flexible design. The belt pressure is applied evenly to the paper, allowing the belt to run at a lower tension, increasing its operating life, while also reducing energy consumption. The rubber compound is produced to Nitta’s own formulation and combines a high coefficient of friction with a strong resistance to abrasive materials such as paper. The result is reliable firm grip over a long service life. Sonoco has now installed the new belts on several of its winding machines and found that the belts’ service lives are exceeding those of the previous polyamide belts by a factor of seven, without any loss in production speed or product quality. “Frankly, we were surprised,” says Sonoco team leader, Luc van Campenhout. “Of course we were expecting to see a marked improvement of the belt’s longevity, but the actual production numbers we achieved with these new belts go far beyond our expectations. “Having tried many different suppliers’ solutions without seeing any significant changes,” he adds, “this was quite a pleasant surprise”. The new belts are made in a mould-less production process, developed by Nitta, which allows the seamless rubber-coated belts to be produced in customer-specified lengths and widths. The belts are available in three different configurations, and additional types are being developed both for use in tube-winding machines and in other applications. n A Belgian manufacturer of cardboard tubes for food packaging has extended the lives of its winding belts seven times by replacing the previous polyamide belts that were failing frequently, with a new, exible, rubber-surface belt that applies pressure evenly to the paper. A Zeroseam tube-winding belt in operation at Sonoco’s Mechelen plant Nitta’s Zeroseam at belt is endless and highly exible