About Us
About Us Martin's Engineering
This About Us Page at Martin's Engineering will give you an insight into what we do. Our main work is in the corrugated & solid fibreboard industries. We can supply a one-off machine, or a complete production line, to integrated corrugator cardboard manufacturers or solid fibre sheet plants in this industry.
Here we can help and assist any company in this field to become much more dynamic & responsive to the needs of their customers in the supply chain of their product marketplace. All this can be achievable at competitive costs when looking at like-for-like new machines.
I have a talented team of Key Partners who have worked together on many projects over several years. We are always ready to give you advice or recommendations wherever we can...?
About Glue Mixing systems
Many problems exist in this area with older corrugators where the Starch Mixers have become outdated or the electro-pneumatic control systems parts are obsolete. With the right knowledge these starch mixing systems can be brought up to date. In many cases, they can be turned into fully automatic controlled mixers.
Therefore, giving them a new lease of life for many years to come. You may also profit from an upgrade or a new replacement kitchen where your working environment requires you to be cleaner and dust free. You may need to be compliant with new standards as required when working with products for the food industry regulations. Health & Safety standards in your factory just need a boost for better operator working standards.
About Product Handling Systems
We can make a one-off machine conveyor system to handle sheets/bundles or pallets, feed your product into a secondary process machine, or transport the processed product away from your machine or workstation.
Or we can make, supply, and install a complete modern warehouse product handling system that will help to increase your productivity, reduce waste, and meet modern health and safety requirements.
About Problem Solving
This is one of the largest problem areas of work we come across, especially with web roll/reel material handling & transport/conveying control. Here we will survey the layout and advice on methods of good practice, to help correct the problems you are experiencing.
The four main production machinery problems that keep reappearing are.
- Poor roller and bearing mounting/support design
- Inadequate web tension control systems
- Poor brake response & controller variations
- Not applying and maintaining good roller design alignment practices
- Training of machine operators that is below par/to be able to work their modern equipment efficiently
About Machine Design & Build
I have been actively involved with the design & building of many bespoke machines for use in the Paper & Board Sheeting and Laminating enterprises, along with various ancillary converting Machines for over the last 35 years.
In this time, I have seen many changes take place, one of the most striking that I was involved with, was a top-secret conversion that was carried out in the early 1980's...!
This was a new “cutting edge” Production Line, control system technology for its day...! Where the production operators would input all product details into cells on the screen of the first “BBC” colour monitors, with a few production orders entered at random.
Then, you could select the production order that you wished to run on the machine...! Finally select whether you wanted to change each order by manual or automatic mode, which meant that there was a minimum or no waste material produced between orders, and there was no need for the operator to be at the desk on order change-over.
This factor alone was responsible for impressive product cost savings. It was now possible to run truly short orders, back-to-back at a profit because the machine did not need to be stopped between order changes. This one crucial factor became an operator's dream to use!
Here was one of the first Direct Drive Knife, retrofitted into a solid fibreboard laminating machine. The increase in production and productivity of this machine was unbelievable to many in the company at that time.
It was several years later before the full potential of this machine’s capabilities was fully realised. When it started to work 24 hours a day, to fulfill the demand of increasing orders. This new demand would result in the company building one new additional production line, that further enhanced more unique improvements incorporated from day one...!
Needless to say! I have built many of these machines over the following years, where I incorporated many new and innovative technical changes into each build. These improvements were not commonplace or utilised in many similar machines in this industry. In fact, they were ahead of their time, as various service engineers would remark, where did we get these innovations made or supplied from?
Reply: ... (No Comment...!)
Now all these new technical engineering improvements that I implemented were to give the company a massive competitive advantage over the competition for many years to come.
About Health & Safety Regulations & CE plus UKCA Marking
With Health and Safety regulations improving machinery safety over the years, this has led to a much safer environment in the workplace for machine operators to carry out production.
Alongside these improvements, all machines placed in the EU marketplace must now comply with CE Marking and other Safety regulations.
Now that the UK has left the EU under Brexit, the new UK machinery guidelines are now under UKCA marking legislation.
To help inform and guide all people involved with the various machinery regulations, the HSE in the UK, has published many guidebooks and leaflets under various ACT's as they came into force over the years.
In the last few decades, the number of people that have lost their lives in the workplace "because of contact with moving machinery" has been "greatly reduced" to fewer than ten per year, in comparison with fewer than 70 in 1973 alone!
The "human factor" if you will, is one of the most uncontrollable items in the safety triangle...! Where guards, interlocks, and sensors are bypassed or altered for production convenience. This may lead to "dangerous occurrences" happening. When new people are asked to use the same machines that were otherwise considered safe to operate.
Gone are the days when people were expected to operate machinery in very unsafe conditions...!
Vigilance and improved safety controls are paramount, with so much machine automation taking over complex machine movements under fine control conditions.
Therefore, many new machine operators arriving in the modern-day workplace will need to obtain a higher level of training and understanding of their production machinery operations. That is before they can call themselves efficient or expert machine operators.
About The Change from DC to AC Drive Systems
The most recent changes that I have implemented in converting production machinery is in the use of AC Inverters to give high repeat accuracy when combined with the correct controllers in various production machinery operations.
The critical requirement in this process is that the quality of all items used in the power train is manufactured in high-quality materials and machined to good engineering standards. Therefore, the entire system is well matched to maintain a long trouble-free life within the designed system dynamics.
In my experience, the following items need to be correctly rated for each machine.
- The motor size in KW output to be powerful enough to do the job expected at the duty required for the task.
- That the capability of the motor's RPM response time be maintained over its operational range, without any decay over prolonged periods of operation.
- Gearbox rated KW output & ratios, are calculated to accommodate the machine's planned operational range and duty.
- Finally, the AC Inverters are from a quality manufacturer, that can meet the designed capability and deliver the required output & rated duty, and are matched to operate efficiently under all production manufacturing requirements.
Then the setup and tuning of these systems are carried out by dedicated world-class electronic technicians to achieve a long-lasting durable machine that is very achievable from the first day of production. Which will only need minimum maintenance over its long life operating in a high-volume high-speed environment.
About Space Age Cutting Tool Materials
One other tremendous change I have seen happen over the years is the immense improvement in the quality of materials used in the manufacture of cutting tools that are now used in various top-class converting machines. They can retain their Cutting Edge for much longer periods between regrinds or replacements.
Thus, giving an extended life in some applications by 2 to 4 times! That is over the life of the original tools supplied with the machines when new. The result here is a greater improvement in production quality with longer machine running times, thereby increased productivity is easily achievable.
About Electronic Machine Control Systems
With the use of dedicated plc systems & PC's controlling the line machinery, coupled with well-trained machine operators that fully understand how to operate the control system of their process machinery to maximum benefit. Companies stand to reap the benefits of increased speed of production & productivity and in many cases making a quantum leap forward from previously known production quantities and improved quality consistency.
The bottom line here is you can have an improved profitable production line of immense versatility, which can be used for the manufacture of a wide range of product lines.