ABB has enhanced its L&W Bending Tester with new features to deliver easier and more reliable operator-independent bending resistance and stiffness measurements.
The L&W Bending Tester, which measures resistance to bending in paper and packaging, is a standalone benchtop instrument featuring a large touchscreen with user-friendly interface and improved post-processing for ease-of-use and instrument check and calibration. Integration with other ABB offerings, such as L&W Lab Management System (LMS), also means connectivity to the full Quality Data Management module within the larger Manufacturing Execution System (MES), enabling greater visibility of quality data across the mill and enterprise.
The new features aim to address the pain points faced by lab and quality managers in mills to ensure optimized bending properties from accurate resistance and stiffness testing, important in the handling and protection of packaging products. Low bending resistance/stiffness can cause runnability issues during printing of paper, foldability issues during converting of board into packaging boxes, and stackability issues during handling and storage of packaging boxes. Accurate measurement of bending properties is therefore critical to ensure specifications are met and these issues avoided, which in turn will improve productivity and costs.