Web-Guided Tour

Though he affirms the movement toward electro-mechanical guides, Eddie Engledow,product manager at Fife Corp., points out that a hydraulic guide's ability to provide enormous amounts of thrust may make it the best solution in large applications, such as a 50,000 lb. unwind station.

Bob Duffy, marketing coordinator for Coast Controls, Sarasota, FL, notes electro-mechanical systems may not fare too well in dusty environments. Duffy cites the case of a chewing gum manufacturer that uses powdered sugar to lubricate the gum on their web-fed packaging lines. The previously installed electronic sensors would become covered in sugar and require considerable downtime to be manually cleaned. Coast's air-controlled displacement guides eliminated this problem, expelling air through air-flow sensors that didn't permit the sugar to settle and disrupt sensing.