Spin-off technology from seaming systems at can fillers is delivering long-life tooling and quicker set up for three-piece canmaking operations.

Double seaming processes at can filling operations have benefited from a wealth of improvements to the materials and set up of tooling on seaming machines. These have also become available to canmakers producing three-piece cans, enabling tool life to be extended and maintenance times to be cut.

"Use of extended-wear powdered steel has improved the endurance characteristics of seaming chucks and rolls to a high degree," says Peter Chronis, vice president of sales at Tool Makers International (TMI) in the US, a leading supplier of tooling to the canmaking industry. The benefits of these specialized steels are improved dimensional stability, compressive strength and corrosion and wear resistance.

Mr. Chronis adds: "surface coatings, such as titanium nitride and tungsten carbide, contribute to producing a long-life seamer tool". These coatings are applied to increase surface hardness and reduce friction.

Techniques for reducing set up times equally help overall productivity. The positions of the chucks and rolls in relation to the can body and end are critical within thousandths of an inch to the reliable performance of the seam.

Traditionally this has been achieved by shimming the tooling to position it correctly, a time-consuming task when a technician has to shim each new tool for each head on a seamer. Depending on the number of heads (sometimes up to 18) this process may take several hours.

Bill Huff, maintenance supervisor at Brockway Standard's paint can manufacturing plant at Picayune in Mississippi, one of a number of plants operated by the company in the US, explains: "Seamer mechanics would have to spend time on adding or removing shims to properly set the bearings," he says. "The components had to be assembled and disassembled several times until the roll was properly set."

Two solutions to this from TMI are the Adjustable Pin and the P-Pin, both of which require much less setting up. The Adjustable Pin works in conjunction with the seaming roll on Angelus 60L or 61H seaming machines to form an Adjustable Pin Assembly. The Adjustable Pin resides inside a standard seaming roll and consists of a locking pin, a roll pin and locking screws.

This system reduces tooling change time and enables seamer mechanics to make fine-tuned adjustments quickly. "Once we began using the Adjustable Pin, we realized an immense time-saving during the initial set up," recalls Mr. Huff.

TMI has also developed the double groove seaming roll and P-Pin for use with Angelus' latest P-type seamers and older models which work in the same way as the Adjustable Pin. . .

The double-groove seaming roll is manufactured for both the first and second seaming operations and has two mirror profiles ground onto a single roll: when the first is worn the mechanic inverts the roll on the P-Pin and uses the second profile. When both grooves have been used the P-Pin remains on the machine and only the double-groove roll is exchanged.

. . . "We find there is a time-saving of 50 to 60 percent or more in using the pre-set pins," says Mr. Huff . . . "This is a huge advantage to us because all that is needed is to screw the roll up and down to obtain the correct height, tighten the clamp screw and the roll is properly adjusted. All this is done in less than a minute. Without the P-Pin, the roll itself would have to be shimmed up and down and that could take anywhere from one minute to 10 minutes per roll." 

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