All machines Machines Folder-Gluers and Carton Converting
Printing and Converting
Folder-Gluers and Carton Converting
3:25 Running crash-lock boxes on a folder-gluer. Filmed and published by BOBST. Plays from YouTube, nothing here is re-hosted.
What it does
A folder-gluer takes a flat printed and die cut blank and turns it into a finished carton: folded on the right creases, glued in the right place, pressed, counted and bundled. It is the last machine in the packaging plant and usually the fastest thing in the building.
How it works
Blanks are fed from a stack into a stream of overlapping sheets moving on belts. As the stream travels, fixed rails and moving belts fold panels progressively: a pre-breaker section works the creases so they fold cleanly, an alignment section squares the blank, glue nozzles fire in timed shots onto the exact spot as the panel passes, and the final folding section closes the carton and carries it through a pressing section long enough for the adhesive to set under compression. Everything is done to a moving blank in a continuous stream. Crash-lock bottom boxes, the ones that snap open into a shape when you squeeze the sides, are the hardest style to run fast because the folding sequence has to happen in a specific order in a fraction of a second, which is why dedicated devices exist just for that operation.
The numbers
Folder-gluers in the mainstream folding carton class run up to about 450 meters a minute. The fastest current corrugated and carton machines reach up to 700 meters a minute, roughly 42 kilometres of blanks an hour, with setup times cut by automated adjustment. Upstream, the presses feeding them run to 21,000 sheets an hour on the fastest sheetfed offset machines, and corrugators produce board continuously in a machine often more than 100 meters long.
Who uses one
Folding carton plants, corrugated box plants, pharmaceutical and cosmetic packaging converters, and e-commerce packaging producers.
More printing and converting
See the whole category-
9:44 Printing and ConvertingA slitter rewinder cutting one wide roll into many narrow ones
A slitter rewinder unwinds a giant parent reel, cuts it into narrower rolls and rewinds each one at tension, with automatic core loading and reel change. Web handling at speed is a control problem more than a mechanical one. Ten minutes of a machine doing something deceptively difficult.
-
8:42 Printing and ConvertingHow wrapping paper is printed
A full production run of printed wrapping paper on a large format offset press, from plate to finished pallet. Heidelberg North America explains ink, coating and the reel-fed sheeter feeding the press. A genuinely good end-to-end look at commercial printing.
-
7:11 Printing and ConvertingHow paper becomes corrugated board
Georgia-Pacific walks through corrugated board from paper reel to finished sheet, filmed inside their own plant. It is plain, factual and shows the corrugating rolls forming the flute. The best short explanation of how a cardboard box actually gets its strength.
-
5:51 Printing and ConvertingHow tissue paper is made
A tissue machine turns a dilute slurry of fiber and water into dry paper in seconds, at speeds where the sheet would tear if the tension were wrong by a fraction. Valmet explains the headbox, the Yankee dryer and the creping blade. The scale of a paper machine is hard to grasp until you see the reel.
-
4:46 Printing and ConvertingInside a corrugator, end to end
A corrugator glues fluted medium between two liners and produces board continuously at a rate no other process matches, then cuts it to sheet on the fly. The machine is often over a hundred meters long. BHS explains the wet end and dry end clearly.
-
3:08 Printing and ConvertingBehind the scenes on a very large format press
Behind the scenes on Heidelberg's largest format presses, where a single sheet is bigger than a table and the press still runs at production speed. Very large format offset is a specialist world with a handful of machines worldwide. Rare access, filmed by the manufacturer.
-
2:46 Printing and ConvertingA digital press printing short-run packaging
A digital press that puts down liquid ink electrostatically rather than laying down toner, so every sheet can be different with no plate change. It bridges the gap between digital flexibility and offset quality. Useful contrast to the offset presses elsewhere in this feed.
-
1:10 Printing and ConvertingA folder-gluer turning flat blanks into cartons
A survey of a folder-gluer range from the smallest to the largest width, showing the module sections that get added for different box styles. Machines in this class reach up to about 700 meters a minute. Good orientation before watching the individual close-up clips.
Looking for one of these?
Presses, die cutters, folder-gluers, slitters and corrugated plant equipment. Tell APE what you need.
American Plant & Equipment has been buying and selling industrial machinery out of Roebuck, South Carolina since 1975, with 97,000 machines in inventory. Tell us the process you need to run and we will go and find the machine, or we will move the one you are finished with.
Prefer to talk? Call (864) 574-0404 or email sales@americanplantandequipment.com.