Without question, world-scale commodity paper or board machines built in the last twenty years or so are universally equipped with the most modern CD profiling equipment. However, there is a significant fleet of smaller paper machines – including some specialty grade machines – which may need an upgrade in quality to keep competitive in their niche markets. Rather than an expensive machine rebuild, an upgrade in cross- direction quality profiling is often needed to achieve a step change in quality uniformity from existing production assets such as headboxes, press sections or coaters. This investment decision can extend their productive lifecycles, thus extracting maximum value from the same equipment. On the other hand, the profilers built into machines of the 1990s are getting a little old. As a result, maintaining their performance becomes increasingly expensive. These legacy profilers are candidates for new actuators to extend their lifecycles without expensive replacement. Whether extending the life of papermaking equipment or that of profilers, new or replacement profiling actuators and associated controls are a profitable purchase. WORLD PULP&PAPER 43 By Mark Williamson, Journalist Engineer CD profiling upgrades lift quality, prolong lifecycles of papermaking assets Since the solutions involve adapting to a wide variety of papermaking equipment (and, in some cases, existing profilers), a supplier of replacements or upgrades must adopt a flexible approach where some custom and supply-to-fit engineering is required. Some of the case studies presented here illustrate the reasoning behind papermakers’ decisions and how improved quality or lower maintenance costs have been achieved. CASE STUDY 1 BURGO IMPROVES COATING UNIFORMITY In a quality-focused case, the Burgo Sarego mill in Italy purchased 38 Tasowheel automatic CD actuators (19 per side) for a twenty-year- old Voith SpeedSizer film coater on the mill’s single production line. Previously, the profiles were manually controlled. The 3.36 metre width machine produces 150,000 t/y of coated woodfree grades with grammages from 100 to 200 g/m2. Whether extending the life of papermaking equipment or that of profilers, new or replacement profiling actuators… are a profitable purchase Figure 1. 19 actuators were installed on both the top and bottom sheet sides at Burgo’s Sarego mill. Mill cases show how improved uniformity and competitive position or lower profiler maintenance costs can be achieved with new or replacement actuators and controls CD PROFILING