Warm-up Contactless, Körber’s Breakthrough Innovation and the First Ever to Use Electromagnetic Induction Heating for Embossing
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Körber introduces Warm-Up Contactless, a hot embossing system for greater product volumes, which does not require modifications of the embossing rolls and does not use liquids at high temperatures. Körber has found a solution to market challenges with a safe product that saves time, energy, and space.
Luca Frasnetti, Chief Technology Officer at Körber Business Area Tissue, comments: “Conventional hot embossing systems had disadvantages that we were determined to overcome. First of all, safety: traditional systems require dedicated areas within the factory; to heat the rolls, hundreds of litres of water or oil at high temperatures and pressure were needed, a big problem in case of leaks or breakage. Secondly, there is an expenditure of energy because it is necessary to heat the entire roll, and not just the external tips, which are actually used for embossing. Finally, time: it takes at least an hour to reach the necessary temperature. We have overcome these problems by introducing a new type of heating, widely used in other sectors, such as the automotive one, but barely used in the tissue sector: induction. Our Solution is Warm-up Contactless, the first patent pending induction system that provides the advantages of hot embossing without modifying the rolls.”
There are several advantages to the system: hot embossing increases volume of the product by up to 20%. In the case of Warm-Up Contactless this is an eco-sustainable process because it reduces heating times by 1/3, saving energy by over 60%. It also makes the system safer because it eliminates the passage of liquids at high temperatures and pressure surges on the line. As well as being easy to apply to existing machinery, it involves no changes to the engraved rolls, offering the possibility of using hot embossing with any existing roll. The system is designed not to interfere with the operator’s work such as web thread up and rolls changeover.
Moreover, if combined with first-rate rewinding technology Perini Constellation, our Warm-up Contactless system maximizes the reduction of the amount of paper needed to produce high-volume products, with a more streamlined design compared to complex and fragmented configurations where paper is first moistened and then dried.
Luca Frasnetti concludes: “Worldwide, the Körber Business Area Tissue has over 100 people employed in Research and Development, with three innovation centers in Italy and two centers in China. We develop over 60 projects every year, 10 of which are breakthrough innovations. Warm-up Contactless is one of these, developed in just 14 months, also thanks to the collaboration between our Research and Development and InnovaLab, a spin-off of the Electrothermal Laboratory of the University of Padua. Our strength is building ecosystems that solve customers’ problems, which is why stable collaboration with universities are essential to achieve important results in a few months.”
