A life in converting

I retired 10 years ago and now live at a slower pace, which has given me time to reflect on what has been a full and eventful life, so I decided to write my autobiography. My involvement with slitting and rewinding machines over 30 years provides fond memories of the converting industry.

During my time with Alan Duffy Engineering and Delta Converting Equipment I saw many changes and had memorable experiences with clients, staff and the machines we built, many of which are still operating worldwide. I was one of the few manufacturers brave enough to put his own name on every machine!

In my early days, machines were relatively basic with web speeds around 100 to 200m/min. My earliest projects were slitting fabrics, wallpaper and similar products. The machines were simple and labour intensive, with bulk reels loaded by hand. More time was spent loading and unloading the machine than it spent running!

Latest technolgy

At Alan Duffy Engineering we decided to key into all the latest technologies, including auto tension control, edge correction, sensitive multi-drive systems, the use of air bars and differential rewinding techniques. Loadcells and innovative reel loading and finished reel doffing systems became the norm and reduced reliance on operator skills while significantly reducing floor to floor times. Speeds were increased to 600m/min and web widths became wider, with correspondingly heavier and larger diameter jumbo reels achieving huge production cost savings.

In some companies, operators who were used to running slow and basic machines often expected to run their new machine like the old one. One client had an ancient single drive machine with a fixed drag brake. They used two operators for this 50m/min machine. One man’s job was to push his knees (protected by a leather apron) and his hands (sheathed in asbestos gloves) against the unwinding reel to act as a brake! On the new machine’s commissioning day this operator appeared - wearing a smart new apron and what looked like goalkeeper’s gloves. He stood ready at the back of the machine to do what he normally did. Seeing our machine running so fast the ‘brake man’ daren’t go near it. He looked like he was staring redundancy in the face – but we reassured him his new job would be moving the finished reels now quickly piling up at the rewind.

In later years some of our machines were 3m wide handling 10 tonne reels at speeds up to 1,500m/min, with auto knife setting, reel load/unload and fully computerised drives and integrated tension controls.

Never a dull moment

Life in this industry was never dull and I recall many amusing encounters such as rats in my bed in a remote part of China and discussing the finer points of a huge high-tech machine with a Finnish CEO in his birthday suit outside a sauna. Another time, while testing a machine for a client, a competitor arrived to see the tests. He remarked on the poor quality of his test material. Our client said it was scrap material. The visitor remarked “I thought you never produced scrap.” “No,” said my client. “We had to make it specially!”

On another occasion I met a client to discuss a major contract over a working lunch with the entire Board present. I was into my presentation when the MD insisted I take a drink with the sandwich I was trying to eat whilst making my proposal. I was handed a can of beer and casually flipped its tab without looking – my presentation was all important.

Suddenly a jet of brown liquid rushed upwards past my face to the ceiling. I quickly tried to stem the flow by placing my hand over the can - a big mistake! The beer spurted out over the table, walls and those directors and their documents within range. I lowered the still gushing can below table level where it proceeded to douse my trousers and those of my companions. It eventually petered out and looking up through my beer stained glasses I saw the devastation I had caused, the only person left unscathed was the MD who quietly said, “We will all remember your visit here today Alan.”

Amazingly, we did get the order but the memory never fades. I could recount many similar stories but there isn’t space here to do it.

I hope some will still remember me and would like to know more about my book My Ladder of Life, which is available from Troubador Publishing. Email marketing@troubador.co.uk. The price is £16 plus post & packing.

Views expressed on this page are those of the author and may not be shared by this publication.