CBC Coating Plant Relies on Removable Electrode Magazine to Get the Job Done

Company Overview

CBC Coatings, a division of Riverside Paper Corporation in Appleton, Wisconsin, coats paper and film substrates to produce tag and label, wall-coverings, and other coated products. CBC Coatings specializes in the development and application of water based coatings and is capable of coating both sides of a sheet in a single process operation.

The Challenge

Earlier this year, CBC was faced with the challenge of incorporating a corona treater into their existing two-station coating line operation. They needed to find a company that had an experienced engineering department and was willing to work closely with their systems integrator to find a feasible and cost-effective solution. Mike Gritton, Maintenance Manager at CBC, explains, “we knew from the start that room was a critical part of the project and that access for threading the coater, cleaning the treater, and being able to bypass the treater when needed were key elements to a successful project.”

Gritton explained “from the start of the project, we dealt with only two vendors, both of whom were very good and could provide us with a high quality product. After we received initial cost of the project and looked into each vendor to compare which would give us the most advantages and support, it was decided to go with Pillar.” He continues “from there, the biggest decision came in how we were going to fit the treater in the machine."

After making the commitment to work with Pillar, the CBC team asked Pillar if it would be possible to retrofit the treater directly into their machine. Frequently, applications involving existing equipment require custom designs, which was the case with CBC Coatings. The application called for two-sided bare roll treatment. In addition to this, the customer expressed a desire to utilize an existing drive roll assembly and incorporate these components into a unitized station with the corona treatment rolls and electrodes.

The Solution & Benefits

To facilitate the design process, the customer employed a third party engineering firm to help with the project. Pillar’s engineering team produced a final layout that included a 10kW P6000 Power Supply to generate a two-sided Universal Corona Treater. After being approved, it was decided that CBC would ship the frame assembly to Pillar for final assembly and test. “Upon arrival of CBC’s frame assembly, we installed the treater rolls, electrodes, controls, and drive bracket. This type of coordinated effort provided several advantages to CBC, the most obvious being the delivery of a factory installed and tested unit,” Scott Maciejewski, Engineering Manager at Pillar, explained. “Secondly, incorporating the drives assembly with the corona components allowed significant cost and space savings. Finally, because the customer had specified preferred component manufacturers for bearings, pneumatics, and electrical controls, this provided commonality of all parts with the rest of the equipment in the line for future maintenance.”

The CBC team liked several features of the Pillar Universal Surface Treater including the electrode magazine being removable, pneumatically actuated, and adjustable gap, as well as the overall design of the power supply. “The removable magazine on Pillar’s Universal Corona Treater played the biggest part of the initial decision. Cleaning the electrodes would have been near impossible if they were not the removable type,” Gritton explains. “We have found that it is best to remove and have total access to electrodes to keep them clean because the location of the treater has limited access.”

The system was originally purchased to ‘bump’ treat HDPE films - the film is treated, and then coated with water-based coating on one or both sides of webs. Ms. Linda Firgens, Technical Manager at CBC, said, “the treater is used to bump the surface tension back up to ensure adequate coating adhesion on rolls that have been reworked on the rewinder prior to coating. Rewinding rolls can reduce the original surface tension.”

The combined engineering efforts from both sides have been a ‘win-win’ for CBC Coatings. Pillar Technologies is extremely pleased with the results and looks forward to serving their future corona treatment needs.