Silicon Release and Glassine

Advances in technology demand higher quality limits and manufacturing efficiency

Traditional papermaking methods for high moisture paper grades such as silicon base, release, and glassine required a multi-step process to prepare the base stock for supercalendering. These steps included manufacturing the paper to a specific moisture average on the paper machine, cutting the paper into smaller rolls and trimming the edges on an off-machine winder, and remoisturizing the paper to a higher average to prepare it for off-machine calendering, and finally supercalendering the product. This multi-step process added significant cost and time to produce the product.

Recent advances in paper finishing technologies in supercalendering and coating allow significant improvements in product quality and uniformity. The market expectations for product quality reflect these advances. To take advantage of these technologies, the quality parameters of the base sheet must meet very specific moisture targets and be very uniform throughout both machine direction and cross direction.

If the product deviates from moisture specifications, roll damage and marking in the supercalender will occur and coating pick-up will be non-uniform requiring down time and lost production that must be made up for.

Because the moisture averages required to meet quality specifications are very high (14 - 20%) release and glassine producers can not take advantage of advanced state-of-the-art on-line calendering technologies. They can, however, implement all but the last step of these technologies by remoisturizing the product on-line to prepare it for introduction into the supercalender. By doing so, the additional steps of off-line remoisturizing traditionally done with rotating brushes and water pans as well as edge slitting and roll cutting can be eliminated resulting in reduced cost to produce the product. New paper machines have been designed with a remoisturizing section between the last dryer section and the reel. Retrofitting an existing paper machine with this technology presents some interesting challenges. Space must be created on the machine. Edge trimming must be done on the machine.

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