A need for improved technology and capacity expansion drove the family-owned converting business, Sixto Packaging, to invest in a new Stanford Products LLC Model 738HC slitter/rewinder. The growing Miami-based business, which focuses on flexible materials for the consumer food and beverage markets, wanted to improve on its 20-year-old Stanford Doctor Machinew but stay with a system from the same supplier.

Run by brothers Felipe, Emilio and Andres, 32-year-old Sixto Packaging continues to grow from its founding by the brothers' Cuban-born parents. Today, the company includes three generations of the Sixto family in its daily operations of flexographic printing.

"We do printing for snack foods, coffee, candy, overwraps," says Felipe, vp and treasurer. "We do peanuts, ice-cream overwraps, toilet tissue, and flavored rices."

Among Sixto's stable of equipment are one 8-color and two 6-color CI-flexo presses from Argentine manufacturer Talleres Venus; a solventless laminator from Bobst Schiavi; and three slitter/rewinders—two from Stanford and an older Taiwanese system. The company serves both primary and contract customers in south Florida, the Caribbean and parts of Georgia.

Sixto said his family initially saw the Model 738HC on display at CMM Intl. in April and decided to purchase it on the spot.

"We have another Stanford that we bought in 1984, and we were so pleased that when we needed a new one, we just called them up to see if they could make a machine for larger-diameter [parent] rolls," he says.

The new slitter/rewinder will increase the company's capacity by allowing it to work with larger rolls. Parent rolls handled by the 738HC can be 40 in. in diameter and 45 in. wide. Rewind diameters reach up to 30 in. The slit-roll minimum (although Sixto says the company hasn't done anything so narrow yet) is quoted by Stanford at 2 in.

Using in-air razor slitting, the 738HC runs all of Sixto Packaging's films, foils, papers and laminate materials. Their particular customized unit features 6-in. rewind shafts, a splice table, roll pusher and unloader, and an unwind roll lift.

Delivered about four weeks after ordering at CMM, the new slitter/rewinder was running immediately after wiring and placement at the plant. Operational controls consist of pivotable touchscreens at both unwind and rewind stations. The PLC-based controls provide running readouts, recipe storage and recall, and machine diagnostics.

Sixto says the machine has been meeting the company's expectations and operating well so far. "The machine's computer controls are new to us, but our operators have adapted well," he says.

Additionally, Sixto credits Stanford with assisting in a smooth startup. "There's a learning curve on any piece of equipment that you have," he says. "Stanford has been working with us to get the operators up to par to run the machine."

After Sixto Packaging's more than three decades in the industry, Felipe Sixto says he sees the printing and laminating business growing in general, as well as his family's own company.

"The business was founded by my father, Felipe, and my mother, Carmen, and it has been a constant growing process. Hopefully, we'll grow even more now with the new equipment we have."