News - Published on 05 May 2021

Coil coater retrofit

Thanks to its expertise as a coater manufacturer, KARL HUGO has developed a made-to-measure casing that fits directly onto the coil coaters. This ensures better protection of operators during production.

Certain companies operating within the aluminium or steel sectors, call upon KARL HUGO to upgrade their coil coating lines. These companies, which have older or different generation coil coaters need to retrofit their machines.  While the basic structure is retained, it is the programming, accessories or the drive systems that are optimised. “”Our mission”, explains Pascal Hermann, a KARL HUGO Project Engineer, “consisted in producing made-to-measure casings to be fitted directly onto the coil coaters in order to protect the roller area.

The difficulty of the operation is that the companies no longer have the drawings of the machines that KARL HUGO must work on. This therefore requires an initial measurement phase to be undertaken. The team takes advantage of a machine shutdown to carry out these measurements. With new drawings and drawing on more than 30 years’ expertise in the construction of coil coaters, KARL HUGO produces a proposal that takes account of operators’ working habits. Presented to the customer in the form of 3D models, drawings are then produced, the points of attachment are verified and the confirmation of the operators is obtained. A second series of measurements confirms the solution, prior to starting production of the different parts. “We control each stage of production up to pre-assembly”, says the engineer. “We carry out a trial assembly in our workshops which concludes with customer acceptance.

Finally, the parts leave the company to be  delivered and assembled by the engineering team at the customer site. The operators receive training in both the use and maintenance of the casings, and the CE documentation is provided to the customer.