[GreenKeys] paper slitter technology

[Lee Mushel]

Gentlemen:

I haven't thought about slitters for a while (retired) but I did spend my 
life in what is usually called "converting and flexible packaging" and we 
did use slitters all the time.   The ones made in the past 15 years are a 
bit "past" the level of making one of the kitchen table but if I go back to 
1965 that might not be true.   And since we are only concerned with paper at 
speeds of maybe a couple of hundred feet per minute (or maybe 5 or ten feet 
per minute for our purposes) and not the several thousand feet per minute 
used to cut your potato chip bag to size I've thought about this myself.

You have to "tension" the paper somehow.   This usually means some sort of 
brake on the unwinding roll and some sort of drive motor to power the wind 
up roll.  Actually, it's a lot more complex than that but for our purposes 
if you have some sort of support and provide some rollers for the paper to 
pass over to establish a "flat" path for some short distance, you can use 
ordinary utility knife blades, spaced at the correct width.  Today the 
"knives" are largely gone and driven, sharpened wheels simulate the action 
of a scissors  and handle delicate materials of all sorts.   I have an old 
blue print machine sitting in my collection of junk that I don't throw out 
because, in the back of my mind I keep thinking that I might build some such 
thing.  Of course, "oiling" the paper is somewhat more complex if you insist 
on that level of  "product" quality.

Seems to me that a while back I recall someone proposing to use a 16 mm 
movie editor for this.   I see nothing wrong with that and the unwinding 
roll would be, I assume, "adding machine tape."   And the brake can be an 
old sock hanging over it with a rock in the toe.

73

Lee   K9WRU   And I'm still looking for Model 15 key caps.....
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <dmm at lemur.com>
To: <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2010 10:23 AM
Subject: [GreenKeys] paper slitter technology


>
> In a recent thread, Pete Lancashire mentioned a paper slitter for
> cutting down rolls (for printing paper? for punch tape? for both?)
> Having never seen such a device, I'm wondering how it works.
>
> Does it unroll the paper past a knife (knives?)  and then re-roll it on
> take-up reels?  Or does it cut into a roll all-at-once as, say, the roll
> spins on a lathe?  Or does it use some other method?
>
> I recall that the accounts of Morse and Vail indicate
> that they had to build a "lathe" for cutting the paper tape for their
> registers, but that was a long, long time ago.
>
> Could one start with, say, a 1" wide roll of paper and cut it down
> on a lathe to width?  (I'm thinking here of 7/8" tape for 6-level TTS.
> You can still get the 1" new, but 7/8" is harder to find.)
> Or is this just asking for the roll to come unwound at speed,
> turning the shop into an elaborate paper spider's web?
>
> Just curious.  One would think that it would be possible to
> "homebrew" a slitter that would suffice for the small quantities
> needed for amateur use.
>
> Regards,
> David M.
> ===
> Dr. David M. MacMillan * dmm at lemur.com * www.lemur.com & 
> www.CircuitousRoot.com
>
>   The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
>       - Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915); Aldo Leopold
>
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