Monomatic

1951 > 2011: Monomatic, 60 years of history

Monomatic was founded in 1951, in the continuity of a family’s traditional machine construction business, and has specialised in non-stop unwinders and rewinders ever since.
Located in Strasbourg, in the heart of Europe, and employing only 60 people, this single-minded approach has enabled Monomatic to become an exclusive specialist and a major player within growth markets worldwide.

KNOW-HOW
The most significant thing about Monomatic is its ability to produce unwinders and rewinders that operate non-stop. When the company was founded, non-stop unwinders were used exclusively for newspapers on high-speed lines. Back then, small printing units always had to be stopped for the reel change.
Monomatic decided to produce non-stop unwinders and rewinders for smaller scale applications in print and packaging.
This commitment is still strictly respected today, and this specialization is undoubtedly the main reason for the company’s expertise and success.
For Monomatic, the top priorities are quality and reliability for customer’s satisfaction always keeping in mind that a fault could force a customer to stop the line and loose valuable time as a result.

IN-HOUSE SKILLS
Monomatic offers turnkey projects, from the study up to the production start-up, all the manufacturing processes being integrated in Monomatic, all missions executed under precise management rules: mechanical and electrical studies, machining and assembly operations, logistics for machine packing and transport, mechanical erecting and electrical wiring, commissioning and training on customer’s site.
Monomatic offers a large range of products and services for the development from a simple prototype to validate a concept to complete production lines including fully automated solutions (robotics/automated devices for reel handling/conveying), thanks to deep and strong collaborations with different partners.

EXPERTISE
Within Monomatic’s range, there are unwinders and rewinders to cover different purposes and to suit different types of material such as paper, cardboard, but also aluminium, film and complexes.
The company can propose numerous technologies – overlap or butt to butt splice – shafted, shaftless or cantilevered shafts execution – zero speed or full speed splice - that can be adapted to suit the specific needs of the customers. The range of machines can handle web widths more than 3 meters wide, and reel diameters of 2.1 meters.
Overall, Monomatic’s machines can offer the advantage of high performance. Some of them can even run over 1000 metres per minute, high-speed machines more particularly developed in response to the needs of the market for making labelstock products. Monomatic is today one of only a handful of companies in the world to offer non-stop machines that operate at such high speeds, and that are capable of splicing at full speed. 

MARKETS
80 per cent of the turnover of Monomatic is realized through partnerships with European manufacturers, for printing, coating, extrusion lines, reputation and fidelity coming from its machine performances that rapidly attracted many business sectors internationally. The company was thus able to develop its skills in fields as varied as packaging, in particular for the cigarette, the pharmaceutical, the food industry, and labelstock, wallpaper, folio sheeting, printing and paper converting.
Although it operates from one site, Monomatic still makes a global impact. Over 2500 of the company’s machines have been installed in more than 700 different firms worldwide. The company began exporting back in the 1950s and today sells around 90 per cent of its output outside France. Over the last ten years, the Asia area have accounted for around a third of the company’s exports and good prospects for growth are expected in the future on this market, but also on other areas, for example, in Russia, Fareast or on the American continent.

INNOVATION
Monomatic has always been an innovative company, granted by more than 20 patents, and key advances have included the development in 1986 of zero speed non-stop butt splicers, machines first developed for making envelopes and years later, for cardboard applications. The latter born is the unwinder type MS-VT, based on new patented technologies, and able to reach speeds up to 700 m/min.
Thanks to this technical innovation, Monomatic became the world leader on the cardboard packaging market, thanks to innovative solutions such as compact design with integrated festoon on top of the reel stand, or high performance with motorized solution for the reel braking.
More recently, Monomatic has employed its in-house expertise to open up new opportunities for its non-stop technology for the composite market. The company developed, under strict agreement of confidentiality, a special machine to overcome the challenges of handling composite materials for the aeronautic industry and for the wind energy. The technical problems involved in dealing for example with fibreglass or carbon fibre are about how to achieve good web tension control and to find the right solution for splicing. In the past, lines of this type were single station only, so Monomatic non-stop technology has made a real difference.

Even after 60 years, Monomatic’s non-stop technology continues to break new ground. Non-stop unwinders and rewinders have already proved invaluable for the packaging business, particularly in cardboard and print applications. Building on the strong position Monomatic has established in these sectors is therefore a central element of the company’s growth strategy.

Always focused on the evolution of its markets, Monomatic, which techniques are today worldwide well-known in non-stop applications, pursues its development over the last months, with new unwinding and rewinding solutions perfectly adapted to the new economical constraints and developed along principles of manufacturing promoting once again the ergonomic aspect.

Based on a perfect control of techniques of nonstop unwinding and rewinding with cantilever shafts execution for cardboard and complexes applications, in particular with unwinders such as the “MS-BB” and “MS-BT” and more recently the unwinder “MS-VT” for high speed applications (up to 700 m/min), Monomatic widens its range of machines with the manufacturing of single station unwinders and rewinders, with manual splice sequence.

The latter born of the Monomatic range, unwinders and rewinders thus baptized “UDZ” and “URZ”, built for rolls having a maximum diameter of 1,85 m, widths up to 1,0 m, and for production speeds up to 400 m/min, present irrefutable advantages as well in term of machine accessibility, as on financial term.

Their rigid construction with cantilever shaft, including all motorized motions, allows a very great facility of reels frontal loading and unloading, with an operating through push buttons. In addition, the integration of AC motors guarantees a very high precision in the web tension regulation.

Based on known and optimized techniques, Monomatic proposes ergonomic and economic solutions, allowing significant reduction of costs of integration, for these unwinding and rewinding functions, when paper or cardboard applications with inline or offline processes can accept a fast stop of the line for the reel changing.

In non-stop version, with automatic splice sequence, Monomatic identically proposes a new generation of turret rewinders with shafts in cantilever execution, thus offering the same ergonomic advantages for the reels unloading.

die Firma MONOMATIC, seit bald 60 Jahren bekannt als Spezialist in der Entwicklung und Herstellung von Nonstop-Ab- und Aufwicklern für Druck-, Beschichtungs- und Kaschierungslinien… setzt ihre Entwicklung fort, indem sie nun eine Reihe von Maschinen anbietet, welche den Erfordernissen des Kunden perfekt angepasst sind.

Bereits an der Spitze der Technologie im Bereich der Ab- und Aufwicklung von dünnen Produkten – mit Lauf- und Wechselgeschwindigkeiten bis zu 1000 m/min für Rollen mit Durchmesser 1,5 m und Bahnbreite 2 m, oder noch mehr – bestätigt Monomatic jetzt ihre führende Position im Bereich der Abwicklung von Karton- und Verbunde dank ihres neu konzipierten Abwicklers „MS VT“, welcher spezial für Schnelllaufenden-Drucklinien entwickelt wurde.

Dieser neue Abwickler, welcher vor Kurzem als Vorschau während der Drupa 2008 vorgestellt wird, ergänzt perfekt die bestehende Produktpalette von Abwicklern Typ „MS BB“ und „MS BT“ (Abwickler für Rollen mit Durchmesser 1,85 m und Bahnbreite bis zu 850 mm, bei Geschwindigkeiten bis zu 400 m/min mit stumpfer Klebung), indem er der immer zunehmenden Anfrage an Schnelllaufenden-Maschinen für Geschwindigkeiten bis zu 600 m/min entspricht.

Der Abwickler „MS VT“ beruht auf der Abwickeltechnologie, welche das Monomatic Team vollkommen beherrscht, und bietet ein neu patentiertes Verbindungssystem an, mit schnellerem Verbindungszyklus und  kürzerer Rollenvorbereitungszeit.

Seine kompakte und ergonomische Konstruktion, für eine erhebliche Erleichterung der Arbeit des Maschinenbedieners, und sein horizontaler Bahnspeicher, für einen bedeutenden Platzgewinn, setzten diesen Abwickler direkt an die Spitzenposition in der „High Speed“-Drucklinien-Industrie.

Dieser Abwickler „MS VT“ ist die Verwirklichung des Talentes für Innovationen, welcher Monomatic seit ihrer Gründung pflegt und ihres permanenten Erlangens nach technischer Lösungen für die volle Zufriedenheit ihrer werten Kundschaft, seien es Maschinenhersteller oder Endkunden.