The sudden disappearance of your capital-equipment budget for next year. An unexpected breakdown of that machine you were hoping would limp along for a little while longer. Or a tantalizing chance to grab a new piece of business—if only you had the right piece of equipment.

All of these scenarios, and many others, are helping spur the current retrofit boom. In a well-established trend, converters are turning their maintenance budgets into a source of funds for upgrades, in order to wind up with the right mix of equipment and capabilities to serve their customers. Not only is it a smart way for converters to keep their equipment current, but it's a shrewd way for machinery suppliers to forge relationships and show off their in-house engineering expertise. Converting has gathered the latest batch of success stories from converters who have raised budget stretching to an art form, and the suppliers who are gladly helping them do it.

A trusting working relationship between customer and supplier can help periodic machine retrofits and upgrades save large amounts of money for the converter, as well as keeping operations current. Such a relationship exists between supplier Faustel, Germantown, WI, and customer Rexam Healthcare Flexibles, Madison, WI. Working with Faustel, engineering manager Doug Endres has worked on no fewer than four major upgrades to Rexam's Faustel printer/laminators from 1994 to 2003.

Upgrades have focused primarily on electronic components, including PLCs, main operating controllers, motors, drives, unwinds, software, and integration with other systems, such as a new thermal oxidizer. Some of the upgrades have involved taking the units out, rebuilding them at Faustel, and reinstalling them at Rexam. Others have occurred onsite at the Madison plant.

"Faustel has been extremely good to work with," comments Endres. "They know our business and they understand the operations that are critical. Our predictive maintenance and upgrades are now being handled internally on a much faster timetable than before, and we can predict which components will go obsolete and plan accordingly."

Among the most challenging, but common, types of retrofits are those where upgrades from one supplier are added to original equipment from a completely different vendor. Recently, new dryers from Paper Converting Machinery Corp., Green Bay, WI, were retrofitted on two non-PCMC presses at Label Technology in Merced, CA.

According to managers at Label Technology, label production rates jumped dramatically. "Our line speeds increased from 250-300 feet per minute to over 450 feet per minute," says David Bankson, vice president at Label Technology. "We've noticed an overall improvement of nearly 200 feet per minute. These new eXtreme dryer retrofits have added a considerable amount of capacity that we really needed."

Label Technology was also very satisfied with the level of PCMC service during the retrofit installation. "PCMC was very easy to work with," says Bankson. "Their technicians made sure that every piece fit together correctly and worked well with a different manufacturer's machine. It was a very clean installation. Even though the dryers were installed on Mark Andy and RotoPress equipment, the new PCMC eXtreme dryers' form, fit, and function were excellent. We're very happy with the results."

While many converting machinery suppliers view retrofits a profitable sideline to their original-equipment business, others make it their specialty. Telstar Engineering Inc., Burnsville, MN, designs and installs customized retrofit press enhancements that allow converters to add to their printing capabilities.

One increasingly popular enhancement to narrow-web presses is a retrofit rotary die station for the addition of foil decorating capability on labels, without sacrificing the ability of the label press to print the full complement of flexo colors, plus varnish.

For example, Telstar recently installed two rotary die stations onto a Mark Andy 4150 press at labelmaker Brook & Whittle, North Branford, CT. The foil applications for customer Gillette on labels for Soft & Dri Soothers had to occur prior to the last print station of the press, allowing for a top coat of varnish at the last print station. The Telstar interprint die stations mounted above the print units.

Besides bringing his customers' presses up-to-date, president Tom Kirtz of Telstar does the design work for prospective retrofits in an up-to-date manner as well.

"Our 'CAD-to-Go' design program lets us visit the customer's site, layout the design sequence on a laptop, then design and build the press unit at Telstar, then in some cases the customer can install the unit themselves, or we can install it for them," he says.

Retrofits, like most other large converting-equipment projects, rarely go exactly as planned. When Cleveland Laminating Corp. was founded in 1996 with the purchase of the assets of an established Cleveland-based converter of foil/film, foil/fabric, and other laminations, the owners inherited an older plant and a great deal of converting equipment in various stages of age and repair.

A four-year, multimillion dollar plantwide renovation and upgrading period was to follow, during which several pieces of machinery were purchased.

One laminator, however, was deemed suitable for upgrade. At first glance, operations manager Frank Bitting, together with Michael Pappas of Catbridge (formerly Shanks Converting), who was advising on what needed to be upgraded, felt that a minor rebuild with new drives, brakes and some tension controls might bring the 86-inch laminator up to speed.

After a thorough evaluation, however, the situation looked worse than first imagined.

"The laminator had been poorly maintained and poorly added onto," said Pappas. "The Glenro oven, although in generally good shape, was open-loop and just tended to heat up and cool down according to its own schedule. There were no controls on the brakes. It needed new rollers. There was no PLC control of any kind. In the end, we decided to take it down to the oven and the steel frame, and just start fresh."

Cleveland Laminating is basically a custom converter, with the bulk of its business consisting of specific converted products for individual converter customers.

Says president Paul Leonardelli, "We enjoy being a converter's converter. We have wide-web capabilities, up to 82-inch laminating and 92-inch slitting. We can run lightweight webs, such as foil, as .00025 gauge, and film at .00025 gauge.

"It is often cost effective for other converters to come to us for specific products, usually because of width capabilities that they do not have in-house, or they need to offload some capacity. We try to grow our business based on our ability to react."

Once Catbridge and CLC managers realized the scope of the rebuild of the 86-inch laminator, things progressed quickly. Catbridge provided the design of the new machine, as well as the installation of the drives, shaftless unwinds, rewind, and many of the fabricated components.

Within three to four weeks, new drives, motors, brakes, rollers and unwinds took their places on the old frame, and the new system was tied together with up-to-date electronic controls, with operators able to use a touchscreen to call up job recipes from past products.

Now the rebuilt laminator is part of this showpiece Midwestern plant, which Converting will profile in depth in an upcoming issue. "The end result has been a simple, yet sophisticated piece of equipment that is operator friendly," says John Post, president of CLC's parent company, Lamtec Corp. "The entire process is PLC programmable."

For established machinery suppliers with extensive equipment lines, growing their business in upgrades and retrofits can be as simple as offering customers a kit.

For example, Fife Corp. has begun promoting a retrofit upgrade package to convert older A9 web-guiding sytems to CDP-01 controllers. The package includes all the current controls needed to accomplish the upgrade in-house, whether the converter favors electromechnical or electrohydraulic operations.

Jim Hopkins, plant engineer at Smurfit Stone in New Philadelphia, OH, has converted more than 20 Fife pneumohydraulic guiding systems to electromechanical guiding systems over the last three years. He reports less maintenance and better performance as a result.

Even as the converting machinery market improves, smart converters and savvy suppliers are finding ways to upgrade equipment for less—a trend that will continue.

A glance through the advertising and product items in this issue alone reveals that dozens of suppliers are touting their ability and willingness to offer kits, add-ons and advice to upgrade both their own older units and those of other brand names, for a fraction of what those units would cost to purchase brand new.

Joining the in-house engineering departments of major equipment suppliers, and the retrofit options they offer, are smaller design/engineering firms that specialize in customizing converting equipment with their own retrofits/upgrade designs. Any of these scenarios afford converters a chance to stay up-to-date and under budget.

Editor's note: Expanded editorial content related to converting-operations retrofits is available in the online version of this article. Point your browser to our Web site, www.convertingmagazine.com and click on the July issue.