The WHRC (Web Handling Research Center) at Oklahoma State University is the birthplace and cradle of the science of web handling. It held its 10th biennial international earlier this month. Though the attendance was down a bit, the quality and quantity of papers presented were as strong as ever.
Neal Michal and John Shelton both gave what may be the first and only substantial papers on accumulators. The consensus was that current designs are primitive and troublesome. The control of alignment and tension is much worse than other web handling components and may be directly responsible for a host of problems such as necking, path control issues and wrinkling.
Wrinkling was, as always, a topic of great interest. Dr Keith Good, the lead researcher at the WHRC, gave a keynote address on the subject. Tim Walker discussed the challenges of semantics (word definitions) and taxonomy (classification).
Other topics included baggy web modeling and measurement (the near consensus is that the web moves to the long side contrary to intuition), a new sensor for tension profile (baggy web measurement), a curl model and a host of papers on tension control and other subjects.
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