Static on Plastic on Pallet Wrapper Experience

Warm the place up a bit.

Its 68-72 degrees inside now.

problem we have is when its this cold outside, the air is dry. and with it being in a warehouse, humidifying the air is out of the question.

Shut the operation in with, to coin a word, a tent! Concentrate the efforts in the tent to achieve a higher humidity. It could be achieved quite simply....

Working with anything that moves plastic or paper in low humidity is always going to be a problem with static build up. Big laser printers also have to have a proper environment for example.

Do also remember, that voltages achieved could even be seriously dangerous to the operators and any electronic equipment.....

It may be possible to make the plastic conductive and that will allow any static build up to be bled off much faster, but I am sure that will increase costs.

I know of no better or cheaper method other than climate control......using a warehouse was maybe a bad decision.....rethink the installation, or avoid using it when humidity is low.

Leave the current ones where they are and add the new(s) one(s), I would add two of them instead of one and then bond them all to the metal frame of the equipment.

I have had lots of experience with this in the printing industry. You CAN NEVER have to many static bars...

thanks,

that's what I was thinking also, I'll try to get that another static bar on the underside opposite of the proposed

Just have to design a mechanism that follows the roll as the roll feeds out and the diameter decreases. a new roll is about 10" diameter, and empty roll is about 2" diameter.

To get around needing the bars to move as the diameter shrinks, if there is enough room, you could install a fixed roller just before the web enters the first pull roller and mount the bars just after that.

The room is difficult. I'll have to go there tomorrow, and look the machine over.

Install a heavy-duty humidifier near the machine. The cold outside air contains very little moisture; the dry air is contributing to your static problem.

We had a lot of problems with ARPAC.

This project was given to me when I was hired. I was the 4th guy that receive this and it was already out of warranty.

The only way I was able to get anything done was I kept a journal, and bypassed the distributor and contacted ARPAC directly and basically climbed the ladder till I got to the president. Of which I released my notes of the problems and issues, non-actions and incompetence of the sales and installers from ARPAC. They corrected the issues we had at hand even though it was 2 years out of warranty.

Its now our machine and frankly, with the experience I had, I rather invest my time more wisely. I'm already getting practical advice.

How do you know that this is static adhesion?

Maybe your rollers are now so clean of any lubrication and smooth from any blemish that a vacuum like seal is happening.

If it is static are the rollers conductive and electrically connected back to the roll?

I put my hand near it (4-6" ) from the film and the film attracts to my hand.

Also I'm pretty familiar with this machine, btw, her name is Betty.

If it is static are the rollers conductive and electrically connected back to the roll?

I was talking to one of our electrical techs that was called there, and he mentioned about grounding the rolls. But they had already tried that before this was my project.

Static bars I think is the answer, We have spares on the shelf, and a power supply, I think it would be easy enough to try this. I wanted to do it, last spring. But we no long had an issue with it because of the humidity.

You might consider creating a closed area just for this process, and then humidifying only closed area rather than the whole building.

That was brought up at our monthly meeting.... At the time there were quite a few issues with the machine and this was not high on the priority list. I think right now, we'll try the static bars.

Humidity ↑ Static cling ↓

Before you spend the money trying another bar on your wrapper you should spend $75.00 and try static string. http://stopstatic.com/

I've got it on a couple of Lantech stretch wrappers, although neither use the plastic top sheet. We just stick a paper slip sheet on top before wrapping. I've got this string on every machine that we run poly film on and I've tossed out at least ten HV bars. Only once did I have a hard time getting it to work on a Shanklin but that turned out to be where my tech hooked the ground on a table sitting on UHMW.

I'm sure there's stuff this string won't work well on but it does amazingly well on the films we use in our bakeries. For the price it's worth trying. Good Luck.

Interesting, we have a spare exair static bar and power supply on the shelf, but I have to look into this. Can't complian about the price.... Almost concerns me. Also have to look into the power supply. Thanks

I have to add this, even throughout the last summer, there was static in the sheet even after it was run through the static bar, but we didn't have problems with it hanging up.

Funny part is we have (2) Orion pallet wrapper, before this ARPAC was bought and never had any problems with the Orion. Then they bought this ARPAC and this ARPAC really make the Orion look good.

If it's getting stuck to the rollers before it gets to the static bars, then yes - the way to go must be one (or more) extra before it gets to the rollers.

The static bars should have been put before the rollers in the first place.

Need some kick arse static bars...

http://electrostatics.com/product2.html

This may sound silly,but it works.

I had a large electronics panel that suffered from static problems in cold weather.

I put a sheet of anti-static fabric softener on front of the air intake of the cabinet filter.

No more static problems.Only thing was the air smelled like a clothes dryer.

Perhaps you could place a few of these in contact with the plastic as it exits the roller.

Cheap,and worth a try. If it doesn't work,just give the remainder to your wife.

Also worthy of note,static seems to prefer a resistance of from 10 to 100K ohms to

ground,rather than a direct ground for some reason.

Before anti-static mats were available,I made one for my work bench,following

instructions from a Popular Electronics article.

The resistor was made by using India Ink to create a path to ground.

The more layers,the less resistance,and stopped adding layers to the path at around 50Kohms.

Worked well for many years.

They also sell conductive carpet for use in computer rooms,to prevent static accumulation.

Perhaps a mat of this carpet in you wrapper area would help.

Go the cheapest route first,with the fabric softener sheets.

"No more static problems.Only thing was the air smelled like a clothes dryer."

Considering what most plants smell like, I'm confused as to why you would list 'the air smalls like a clothes dryer' as a bad thing.

Thanks for all the input, it help all around.

Just got out of talking with the plant engineer this morning. When I mentioned the issues with him, he shared with me, that that will help justify the humidifier that was submitted for the D.C. (Distribution Center).

Humidifier was originally justified for another issue considering our product. This just adds to it.

So until this gets approved, I'll just add the extra static bars as an interim fix.

I'm going over to the DC this morning, to ensure the static bars that are already there are working.

You obviously wrap quite a few skids with these machines. What about the Orions, do they have similar issues and if not, what is the difference?

Having had a bit of experience with shrinkwrappers, my first rule of thumb is always to ground the heck out of everything possible. Second thing is humidity, as posted by a few others. Having said that, your static is coming from the following points (since the problem is at the roller set):

• interaction of the plastic as it is being unrolled,
• passage through the air between the roll and the rollers,
• passage over the rollers themselves

The roller cartridge also pre-stretches the film, and if the roller coverings are worn and slipping you can have a pretty good imitation of a van der Graaf generator. Has this problem been noticed before at similar conditions?

never an issue, but we have the orions in our manufacturing plant where the ARPAC is at our distribution center. At the manufacturing plant, the humidity is higher, and that is the difference.

But we never had a problem with the Orions, Bought, hooked them up and was running ever since.

On a different item, I don't care about the mechanism that ARPAC has to tension rollers that wraps the pallet itself. But ARPAC corrected the issue so it at least it does perform.

We have used lengths of tinsel in the past and it works a treat - I presume it works similarly to static string. Just take care not to touch it or you'll get a belt!

I like this frugal idea.

I was going to say this, (4) years ago, Our electrical tech initially used garlin tinsel for this, it didn't work out for them. became a running joke.

It needs to conduct electricity, away from the film. Did he ground it?

yes he did, the problem as I understand it was, there was so much tinsel there and they didn't have it secured enough.

The other issue, we have tour through the plant. and it looked like chit. Owner wanted it down. fix it right.

And with the combination of the suppliers recommendations that didn't work, and basically guessing that was coupled with other performance issues with the wrapper that I didn't mention. The project was given to the new guy when he was hired, which was me.

Up until yesterday, it was working fine, what happened, was expected. but it is manageable.

I just wanted to bounce it off here.

Because putting on more antistatic bars, to quell any of "We already have antistatic bars on, what do we need more."

Of which we have a monthly meeting this afternoon.

Typical owner, cares more about how it looks than how it works!

By the way, although some antistatic articles LOOK like tinsel, they aren't. They are plastic with just an ultra thin metal coating, if your lucky.....

We used them on our printers to good effect.

But what was best, was a thin, earthed at both ends, metal chain that simply brushed the static away....one every 20 cm or so, at right angles to the rotation of the roller.....

Have you mentioned what the roller is made of? If plastic, that can be part of the problem. Even if metal, that still needs earthing.

Also, the roller is mounted using bearings, you need brush contact to stop the static going to earth via the bearings.....

The humidifier will probably work great, if you can raise the humidity to over 50%.

You now need Humidity monitors....

it did look like crap. And the cost of basically destroy the first impression weighs heavily especially when the unit is right when you walk in with the customer.

Humidity monitor are included with the proposal. Do to another requirement.

I agree that flimsy tinsel is not at all a final, robust solution that management will want permanently installed. However, with holiday decorations at bargain basement prices now, it can be a cheap "proof of method" tool to tell you what should work.

yep once a year it would be quite fitting.

It simply does not work well, assuming its modern tinsel and not the old fashioned one that had a high percentage of lead in it.

An Ohmmeter will help you to discover just how conductive it is - or not!! Use probes that are not "sharp" by the way.....modern stuff is mostly plastic, not metal.....

I've used anti-static brushes to good effect when processing A4 paper sheets. These can have carbon fibre or stainless steel filaments. Theoretically these should be slightly clear of the web but I have found they also work OK if they contact it.

They are easier to locate into tight spaces than anti-static bars and, in my experience, work better than bars in the applications that I have used them.

www.ksltd.com/products/anti-static-brushes/

I'll look into this, thanks

I went to a warehouse to service a portable evaporation cooler/port a cool, the cooler was positioned near a wrapper like that one. It allowed " spot " cooling and humidity directly at the wrapper, I don't remember asking them why they needed it, I was just happy to have the job.

I have just sorted out a piece of gold coloured tinsel from the Christmas decorations and measured it on a meter using Ohms. I measured over a piece about an inch long. It has basically an infinite resistance as it simply showed my body resistance of just over 20 megohms, as I was holdig the prods against the tinsel....

Having the tinsel in parallel with my body resistance did not change the reading, so reckon with at least a 5-10 times higher resistance than my body.....

For me its simply open circuit.....

Therefore it is totally useless in removing static and could in fact make the problems even worse, by adding to the static.....

For anyone interested, tinsel was sometimes made of silver, gold and even copper and lead, but today its always plastic.

Antistatic Tinsel is still made, here for example:-

Antistatic tinsel from the UK

For a potted history of "normal" Tinsel, there is an article here:-

A History of Tinsel

when we tried it, I wasn't there, but that was over 4 years ago, and the operators are still laughing about it. They even kept it at the station and it was gold also.

That is the only thing is one does not want to induce static.

I have enough feed back here that confirms about the static. Also some products I wasn't aware of that I can look into.

I bought the kit from stopstatic.com (one of the suggestions) Also pick up a meter from them.

Just so happened that I just came from our Distribution Center and installed some antistatic string and antistatic cord on our wrapper.

Yesterday I transferred back into our plant where I use the static string. Then I seen the couple of emails pop through from this thread... didn't bother opening them, since it was a very hectic day. But I did go in pull the string from the cabinet and set it on my desk as a reminder. I was going to come back to this thread and offer to send you a few yards of string to see if it would work for you. Now I see that you are trying it. Hope it works out.

Let us know if it solves this problem or not, would you?

Good Luck

that's tester, unbelievable....

I was reading a static output when I was walking up to the plastic roll, I thought I didn't Zero it out. so I turned away reset it and walked up to the roll and was 40 kV and I was still 18" away,

Anything over 20 kV you're suppose to stop and discharge it.

I mentioned the results to the Electrical Tech I had with me and he went up and without thinking and touch it. "CRACK".

Why is it so funny when it happens to someone else.

I have monthly meetings with the company execs. and its just more justification for putting in air conditioning.

I also put these on our manual sheet rolls. And these where clocked at 35-40+ kV, after I stalled them, it was down to about 7 kV. But I need to double check. who knows if the electrical technician was around and discharged it before I took the reading.

I might try and buy one of those meters, I always just used the arm hair to gauge it.

One of my favorite things is taking the kids to the park and cathing them unawares coming down the slide. I can usually get at least a few good pops on the end of their nose before they wise up.