Preventing Sheet Metal Wrinkling in Coil Lines

Abstract

Coil lines are used in metal packaging facilities to treat the metal before forming the final product. As the sidewalls of cans are becoming thinner and thinner, one can see that the equipment has not been designed properly to feed up lighter plate weight metal. Thinner can walls cause the metal sheet to be fed into the machine crooked and results in a wrinkling of the first few feet of metal, which then needs to be thrown away. Because the current equipment is not working properly, operators have been feeding sheets of metal up a ten-foot ladder into the machine to feed the sheet in straight. This method puts the operator at a safety risk. The feed mechanism that is currently installed does work better with heavier plate weight metal. After talking with the operators and looking at the current equipment, a conceptual design test prototype was built to see if it would fix the problem. When running numerous tests with the prototype it was verified that the conceptual design would fix the problem. After the test prototype proved to be successful, a full design of the roller system was implemented. The design is currently finished and is in the process of being purchased. The expected installation date will be December 3-7th of this year.