Improvement of a Splicing Machine to Decrease Abrupt Tension Changes and Tail Defects during the Roll Exchange Process in a Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing System

The use of the splicing system is necessary to exchange a fully unwound roll to a new one without stopping the roll-to-roll manufacturing machine. However, abrupt tension changes and tail defects, which is an overlap of completely unwound films with films in the process of being unwound, could occur during the roll exchange phase causing film loss and deterioration of product quality. Herein, we improved the splicing machine in an industrial scale R2R manufacturing system to decrease abrupt tension errors and tail defects. First, the effects of the factors generating the tail defects in the splicing machine on the net tail lengths were analyzed using designed mathematical models. Furthermore, the reason for the abrupt tension disturbance in the roll exchange process was determined. Based on the analyses, a passive dancer system was applied to the unwinding section to attenuate the tension error, and the time interval between the pressing and cutting phases was decreased by changing the signal processing method of the previous version of the splicing machine. Experimental results showed that the abrupt tension change was decreased by an average of 46.5%, while tail lengths were decreased by more than 2.5 times, thereby verifying the superior performance of the upgraded splicing machine.