Whilst most of us were off enjoying abit of family time over the Christmas break, Board24 Preston were busy making further improvements with the replacement of the duplex cut off knife.

Albeit a challenging time to make such improvements due to the global pandemic, the project was successfully managed by Operations Manager Eric Marshall; “We decided to replace the Duplex Cut Off Knife, after the successful installation of the Fosber Rotary shear, slitter scorer and web director, we chose a Fosber cut off knife combined with a waste sheet ejection system. The reason for the change was twofold, obsolescence issues and technical support, which has been excellent with the other equipment installed by Fosber.”

The installation was very interesting, as the site was unable to get a Fosber Technician over to the UK because of Covid-19 restriction, but with the help of Microsoft Teams and the Technical know-how of Board24 staff and J.K.S.P, the installation and commissioning was carried out without any Fosber Technicians on site just by setting up CCTV cameras and Teams.

“We started up after Christmas and after commissioning we have not looked back. The cut off marches in seamlessly with our Escada Synchro control system and has a much better ‘knife speed curve’, this allows us to run shorter chops at a higher speed than the older MHI cut off. Downtime has been reduced by 75% of the cut off and the waste ejection system is working very well.”

The Fosber Technician eventually did get to site to complete the operator and engineering training and accept the sign off by Board24 that all was well.

Phase two of a three phase plan has started in earnest (phase one and phase three have been completed – slightly out of order), this involves a factory extension of circa 50,000 square feet of warehouse space to cope with the extra demand.