KMEZ has completed installation of Slitter and Sheeter for foil cutting in the Copper Foil Electrodeposition division currently under construction
Both machines were shipped at the Russian Foil plant back in January 2020 disassembled in several large units each. By the time they arrived, a special room for copper foil cutting was prepared in the division. This room has to correspond to the high standards for cleanliness, air temperature and degree of humidity – it must be sterile here, like in an operating room. Even the cutting operators shall work not in their usual working cloths — jackets and trousers, but in purposefully selected overalls made of smooth, lint-free fabric, with tight-fitting sleeves. Any speck of dust deposited on the product can negatively affect its quality. That is why the Miass Medical Equipment Plant was engaged in the premises interior fit-out. Specialists from Miass made panels, doors, airlocks and sheathed the walls of the room with materials that are easy to sanitize.
Units of Slitter and Sheeter machines were installed in the already equipped room and were waiting for their turn for a whole year, while the installation of ED cells and Treater was taking place. As soon as the work on more complex equipment approached to the end, the builders from SMU-2 started assembling the cutting machines in accordance with the instructions and drawings received from foreign manufacturers. The parts placed in the design position were fixed and interconnected. Then the electricians laid a cable loop, connected it to the control cabinets, carried out the wiring of communications inside the cabinets. Then, the division specialists tried to turn on the machines and cut the foil roll obtained in November 2020 during the trial run of two ED cells.
“At first, the roll is fed into the slitting machine,” says Andrey Kazakov, a cutting operator with 25 years of experience. “We can set the number of strips into which the initial canvas has to be cut, and the width of each of them. Everything depends on the customer wishes: the canvas can be cut into two, three, four strips of different format.”
“Then the strip of the required width is fed into the Sheeter, where it is cut into sheets of a given length,” explains Andrey’s colleague Yuri Popov. He, too, has been working with foil for over a quarter of a century. He says that the new machines are smarter, more complicated than those on which they had to work before. “These machines are equipped with many sensors, stuffed with electronics. You have to keep track of a large number of parameters, but it is very interesting to adapt to modern equipment.”
Indeed, the operation principles of cutting machines have remained the same, but there are some improvements that increased their reliability. Accordingly to the Deputy Head of the Division – Igor Tarakanov, on previous machines one of the two knives was motionless. The load was distributed unevenly, the stationary knife wore out faster, and there was a risk of copper chips formation, which could settle on the foil. Now both knives are movable and share the load equally, which means they will have longer service life. The risk of foreign particles formation is also minimized. Moreover, the machines are equipped with a special device that works on the principle of lint rollers for clothes and removes foreign particles from both sides of the foil.
Currently the equipment for foil cutting is running in test mode.
