Line and contrast sensor for web guiding in packaging production

Machines for producing packagings and labels today operate at speeds that were hardly imaginable just a few years ago. Consequently, the associated demands on web guiding are tougher than ever before. Innovative solutions, such as the easy-to-operate CLS Pro 600 digital line and contrast sensor from BST eltromat International, guarantee continuously precise web guiding, and thus constant, perfect quality of the packagings and labels produced, when processing a wide range of different materials, even at highest speeds. At the same time, perfect web guiding minimizes waste and machine downtimes.

Material webs that are guided via rollers normally have one particularly undesirable habit: they tend to go off track. This is where a key role is played by the web guiding system, which keeps the web in the defined target positions. Even when operating at the highest processing speeds, it guarantees precise infeed of the packaging and label materials into the production system, and their trouble-free passage through the individual process steps, all the way to straight-edge rewinding.

Flexibility in web guiding

Used by numerous packaging and label printers around the world, the CLS Pro 600 digital line and contrast sensor from BST eltromat offers machine operators complete flexibility, together with unique operating convenience and very high efficiency. Its color sensor provide non-contact, precise scanning of solid lines, broken lines, print edges or web edges. In this context, its automatically controlled LED lighting ensures optimum lighting conditions at all times, this in turn guaranteeing uncompromising reliability in web guiding, even when working at very high machine speeds and with critical materials with reflective surfaces, for example.

Thanks to the high scan rate, in combination with the high-resolution CCD color line chip, precise guiding of the webs is guaranteed, even when dealing with broken lines or contrasts. Consequently, the CLS Pro 600 digital line and contrast sensor again delivers unequivocal performance regarding the measuring results at all times.

Taking user-friendliness to new heights

One of the principal reasons why so many packaging and label printers all over the globe opt for this particular sensor, is its unique user-friendliness, which it above all owes to its intuitive user prompting and its clearly structured menus. In fact, many of BST eltromat’s customers worldwide work with this sensor because other customers of the company recommended them this system for web guiding.

The color display of the CLS Pro 600 shows all messages and values in clear, easily legible form at all times. The variable layout of the menu interface allows the machine operators to conveniently and individually define the functions of importance to them. It later takes just the push of a button to retrieve these functions. The sensor’s control panel can be pivoted through up to 180° on a special guide, making the machine operators’ work even more comfortable.

Thanks to the clear structure of the integrated color display, the machine operators need very little time to set up the CLS Pro 600. For instance, if a machine operator wants to control a web position on the basis of a line, all he has to do is select the new contrast on the control panel and confirm it by pressing a key. A laser subsequently projects a red line to allow the operator to easily align and set the camera on the basis of the line selected for web guiding. The Enter key then just has to be pressed to switch the device to Automatic mode.

From then on, the web’s travel is automatically controlled on the basis of the selected line, by the digital sensor sending corresponding correction signals to an actuator. The signals ensure that the actuator moves the guiding device accordingly. That closes the control loop of the web guiding system, whose sensor thereafter continuously scans the travel of the web throughout the production run, compares the current values with the predefined target values, and sends correction signals to the guiding device in the event of deviations – until the target position is reached again.

BST eltromat has been developing innovative solutions for web guiding since 1979. It was as long ago as then that the company committed itself to professional competence in matters of quality assurance in connection with moving webs. In the course of the decades, this has given rise to a comprehensive portfolio of efficient, productive solutions for dealing with widely differing demands on web guiding, offering customers a choice between Eco versions, basic systems and high-end solutions – that are adapted to specific tasks by the company’s specialists, should the need arise. Web widths ranging from 10 mm all the way to 5 m are covered by BST eltromat.

For more information please contact:

BST eltromat International GmbH
Heidsieker Heide 53
DE – 33739 Bielefeld
Germany
Phone: +49 (0) 5206 999 0
Fax: +49 (0) 5206 999 999
info@bst-international.com
www.bst-international.com