Hydralign Industry Leading Safety Chucks Brought to Market by Butler Automatic

By John Gonsalves, Purchasing Manager, Butler Automatic


While the market is in a state of hurried change – Hydralign Safety Chucks continue to be “rock solid”. Our obsession with high quality components, competitive pricing and lightning speed deliveries set us apart from the competition. Our safety chucks provide our customers with a quick change and improve cycle time at the end of their production process. By simply replacing the hardened upper and lower jaws our customers save time and money in replacement costs.

Many companies in our position would succumb to the temptation to outsource their safety chuck manufacturing. We choose instead to take advantage of our lean and continuous improvement assembly practices as well as our ISO 9001 accredited manufacturing facility to protect product superiority. Every component of our safety chuck is designed and manufactured in the United States to ensure the highest quality level possible. Our current fill rate on safety chuck orders is 95% with a company goal of 100%.

In today’s rapidly changing manufacturing landscape, we understand that delivering a clear, consistent message to our customers is now more important than ever. Our message is that Hydralign parts are available and we are ready to fulfill your needs.

For more information please visit http://www.butlerautomatic.com/hydralign. To place an order please call 1-800-688-0954, or email parts@butlerautomatic.com.

Splicers Revolutionize Productivity for Food Processing Plant

Cincinnati-based JTM Food Group is still thanking its luck for stumbling upon a zero-speed automatic film splicer by Butler Automatic at PACK EXPO International several years ago. JTM vice president Joe Maas says they are still benefiting from the productivity wave three years later. JTM is a food processing plant with more than 700 food products, about 70 percent meat and 30 percent non-meat, which has grown from a neighborhood meat store in 1960 to today’s sales of $170 million, with 430 employees.

Until it purchased the Butler Automatic splicer, JTM was switching rolls of film manually on its Vertical Form Fill and Seal (VFFS) machines used for its grind and form and kettle cooking packaging operations. The time it takes to change rolls of packaging film is frequently the single greatest cause of downtime in packaging lines; Maas estimates that it was taking about 10 minutes for each packaging roll changeover, which mounts up considerably over the course of the day.

JTM had accepted this downtime as a cost of doing business until a few years ago, when while walking the PACK EXPO floors, Maas spotted a zero-speed automatic splicer exhibited by Butler Automatic. The splicing technology joins a new roll to an expiring one without stopping the production line. When the splice is complete the accumulator is re-filled and the expired roll can be changed while the new roll is running, eliminating roll change downtime in production.

Maas found the Butler splicer to be a straightforward machine that is routine to operate. He shared with Butler that the true cost benefit for a particular process depends upon how many hours one runs a VFFS machine. If lines are busier, the cost benefits became more obvious. Mass says he goes through 50 rolls a week, which translates into about 500 minutes or just over 8 hours of production time gained by adding the Butler splicer.

Maas said, “The bottom line is that the automatic splicers give us more uptime on our VFFS machines and we produce more product. I have made a lot of money as a result of stopping by their booth.”

Read more in the April issue of Packaging World.