A growing market and a hot new slitting machine have come together at Specialty Roll Products (www.specialtyroll.com). An up-and-coming player in the point-of-sale (POS) market, as a manufacturer of two-ply and thermal rolls for ATMs, cash registers, pay-at-the-pump and credit-card machines, Specialty Roll already owned one JJS semi-automatic slitter-rewinder from Jennerjahn Machine (www.jennerjahn.com). It was purchased in December 1999 and brought the number of slitters at their facility to three.

Then they became intrigued by a new concept aimed at their market. In a survey conducted by Jennerjahn Machine, converters indicated that the demand for single-ply thermal rolls would continue to increase at a rapid pace over the next several years. They agreed that in order to compete, they needed to find methods to more efficiently produce this product. In fact, 91 percent of respondents indicated that utilizing fully automated slitting/rewinding machinery would be critical to remaining competitive in the POS industry. After considering the results of the survey and its implications, Jennerjahn created a new machine for these converters.

The core concept of the DJJF is simply to share several common, but expensive components—such as a core hopper, bowl feeder, log eject conveyor and roll processing line—between multiple rewind stations. Converters could purchase the machine for a fraction of the usual investment andlower their labor cost by 75 percent.

"We were able to see a test run of the DJJF machine at Jennerjahn's facility in Indiana in 2003," said Specialty Roll's president, Paul Nuckolls. "Speed, durability and a greater level of automation were the attributes that we were looking for." Their new machine was installed in March 2004.

The most important attribute of the DJJF machine is that it is fully automatic and that it is basically two rewinders in one, sharing the same conveyor, which can be run by one operator.

"We're now producing twice as many rolls on one shift as we would be with a standard slitter," says Nuckolls. "For instance, we're now producing 35,000 3-in. rolls in one eight-hr. shift with the dual unit. We plan to add a second shift in another three to five months."

After that, Nuckolls speculates, there may a need for a second DJJF machine, in another 12–18 months. This is, after all, a rapidly growing market.