Last January Austrian Standards presented five companies, including the Voith Group, with the Living Standards Awardfor the development and use of innovative and practical quality standards. Through the development of a new quality standard, Voith and Truetzschler have managed to combine the expertise of the nonwoven and paper industries and in doing so have produced a customized international safety standard for wet-laid nonwoven machines that can be applied in both sectors.
Experts from Voith worked with Truetzschler Nonwovens to elaborate the content of the Voith standard VN 3260 and then develop it further to produce DIN EN ISO 22291 – safety requirements for wet-laid nonwoven machines.
The newly developed ISO 22291 now enables manufacturers to design and implement standardized safety equipment. This reduces the amount of engineering work involved, leads to a lower accident risk, boosts a company’s competitive position and thus helps it tap into new markets. In the course of the introduction of the new standard, Voith chaired the Technical Committee ISO/TC 72/SC 8/WG 3 in the segment textile machines.
As a hybrid machine, the webforming machine can be used in both the textile and the paper industries. As different safety requirements apply in these two sectors, it was necessary to produce a customized international safety standard. This was particularly necessary because customers had very different expectations. This standard now defines, in a readily comprehensible way, the requirements that these machines have to meet to ensure safe operation.
Voith and Truetzschler jointly developed the manufacturing process for wet-laid and hydroentangled nonwovens. The production lines on which these materials are produced consist partly of paper machine components and partly of components from nonwoven machines. The manufacturing process for wet-laid nonwovens is similar to that for producing paper.