Optima, a manufacturer of a wide range of machines for packaging paper hygiene products, launched the new Optima LS Stacker, which processes up to 1600 units per minute and forwards them in stacks of up to 100 units/min to the downstream packaging machines. The company is touting this technology, considering the weight of the bundled bed liners, incontinence products or other nonwoven stacks to be transported through the machine – a maximum of 5kg per bundled stack. Increased flexibility is a further advantage of the new system.  
 
Due to the high speeds, considerable g-forces are exerted on the product mover and the guides of the Optima LS Stacker. These forces are compensated by way of the inherent magnetic fields of the linear drives. The magnetic forces are generated to allow for secure guiding of the products across the entire movement. With the use of this newly developed system, the advantages of the linear drives can be fully exploited. 
 
The maximum output to date was 800 units / min. and 75 product stacks / min.  With the new drives and output, the stacker enters the domain of diaper packaging speeds and, therefore, can also find application in that market. 
 
Newly designed cassettes on the Optima LS Stacker take up the products.  Instead of base plates, the new cassettes use intermeshing forks. These can be adjusted as needed to suit the pitch of the freely adjustable mover. Format changes can therefore be made “on the fly” at the push of a button. Only once the maximum or minimum pitch of the forks are reached, is a manual intervention and replacement necessary. With this system, product and customer specific forks can be designed to accommodate the most number of products or stacks within a customers’ portfolio, thereby minimizing the need for manual changes.  Customization for “low counts” or small packages is also possible. 
 
A further feature of the new Optima LS design is the so-called tightening function.  The product stack, which is in the cassette, is held and calibrated for a specific force. This function generates several advantages, according to the company. First, a stable process is guaranteed, since the products in the stack are held tight. At the outlet of the machine, the stack is tight and secure, which is especially important for secure product handling processes at the high speeds.  The tightening also has the secondary effect, that additional tightening or compression of the stack is no longer required in the downstream machines. 
 
The new mover cassettes are compatible with existing packaging processes – the typical “standard” transfer is unaffected. Despite this new, highly dynamic variant of the LS Stacker, the original variant with the lower output is still being offered and developed. The footprint of both variants is nearly identical. The new Optima LS Stacker can be intelligently combined with various packaging machines supplied by Optima nonwovens.