In recent years, technology for products like baby diapers, feminine hygiene and adult incontinence products have evolved to become more flexible and efficient to respond to the different needs of manufacturers around the globe. Hygiene companies are looking to achieve more with their machinery investment and manufacturers have risen to the occasion with machines that provide the ability to offer a wider range of raw materials to make a more far reaching product line. The following is a look at what some of the world’s largest suppliers of hygiene machinery have to offer.

Anqing Heng Chang Machinery
Anqing Heng Chang Machinery (HCH) offers baby diaper machines, adult care machines, sanitary napkin machines and a full servo control robot case packer. HCH has been continuously focusing on the innovation of various machines to broaden the supply category and improve speed and performance.

In 2016, HCH introduced a new sanitary pro machine targeting 1800 ppm with a dual lane packaging machine capable of 140 cycles per minute. This machine is equipped with a case packer with a robot, offering complete solutions for converting machines. Additionally, HCH has a diaper machine able to make full width waistbands on 800 ppm lines. Various new functions allow this machine to make final products more skin friendly.
www.aqhch.com.cn

Cellulose Converting Solutions
As an OEM, Cellulose Converting Solutions (CCS) is always carefully assessing what should be delivered in terms of superior technology. Most recently, these efforts led to the introduction of a vision system that has been a significant step in improving the quality of the disposable product going onto the shelf.

Nearly all disposable product manufacturers are running quality checks on core composition post-production and CCS has started a program in partnership with Alcatera LLC to develop a technology enabling real time online detection for the absorbent core. Alcatera is a spinoff company from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and its cofounders have been engaged in the development of miniaturized critical sensors used for space science applications. The Alcatera team, in partnership with CCS, is now leveraging the expertise of Alcatera and its innovation from space science applications for the absorbent hygiene industry.

This technology features an advanced nano-scale silicon technique that has substantially changed the world with sophisticated but cost-effective communication, computation and network systems. Thanks to this technology, today’s industrial sensors have become smaller and more “intelligent,” more autonomous and better connected. Undoubtedly, the health and hygiene industry can also greatly benefit from this success by integrating “intelligent” sensors to the production chain.

“One of the important aspects of production for this new technology is the non-intrusive monitoring of the SAP distribution within the absorbent structure,” says customer service professional Metilde Olivieri.

“In the past years we have been observing that SAP has become an ever important component of the absorbent core for disposable products,” she says. “With thinner cores and the tendency of going towards fluffless cores, both the market end users and manufacturers are becoming more sensitive to the high performances of the product and without compromises on the total quality of the disposable good.”

Also changing things in the hygiene is Industry 4.0 where decentralized intelligence helps to create a network of intelligent objects with the interaction of the real world with the virtual one and which represents a new and crucial aspect of production processes.
www.ccsol.it

Delta Converting
Delta offers totally full servo lines for the production of adult diapers, light incontinence products, underpads, a full range of feminine hygiene products and baby diapers. During the past five years, the machine transmission concept has completely changed from mechanical to a full servo driven system and Delta is offering high value manufacturing machines, according to “Industry 4.0.”

“This development has been driven by European and American customers, who demand higher speed, more productive machines with higher performances,” says Ida Guerreschi. “This means a combination of high efficiency together with high product quality.”

Customers want to have access to production data under control at any given moment, meaning that it is necessary to create a connection between physical and digital systems. In other words, the use of machinery connected to the web, analysis of information obtained from the network and the possibility of a more flexible management of the production cycle.

Meanwhile, the incorporation of digitalization tools offer a wider range of  more immediate solutions such as three-dimensional drawings, three-dimensional printers and remote connections, including data management and data analysis to detect weaknesses and strengths of production.

From a regional standpoint, Europe is showing strong demand for machines that respond to Industry 4.0. “Delta has invested in new technology and human resources, in order allow professionals and workers to move within the new systems with the expertise coming from their background,” she says.

Basically, the machine electronic concept is the same, then the program is adapted according to machine typology and final product. Efficiency, raw materials savings, high performance and minimal downtime are the ”must” that Delta customers ask for their machines. Delta engineers and technicians cooperate with customers and work together to make efficient and high performing converting machines.
www.deltaconverting.com

Guanzhou Xingshi
Guanzhou Xingshi Equipments offers full servo sanitary napkin machines, panty liner machines, female pull-up napkin machines, spill-proof pad machines, baby pull-up diaper machines, baby diaper machines, adult diaper machines, and adult pull up machines as well as an automatic stacker and bagger systems, diaper auto packaging, system, vision system, electric cam and flow meter for hot melt applications.
www.xingshi.com.cn

Hangzhou Creator Machinery
Hangzhou Creator Machinery offers baby diaper, adult diaper, sanitary napkin, underpad and material laminated machines for the hygiene market. Most recently, the company introduced a full servo with ultrasonic sealing hour glass type pull-on baby diaper machines (T-type compatible) and a full servo adult incontinence diaper machine (pant type sanitary napkin compatible). Wang Zan, chief sales director, says all of the machines the company manufactures are designed according to each customers’ request. Hangzhou Creator can supply a series of services using the latest product information, the latest raw material information and the latest technology in the field.
www.createmachine.com.cn.

Fameccanica
The FA-X P10X is the latest new high speed baby pant machine from Fameccanica. Featuring a cross-direction process incorporating the new Fameccanica MHR Ultrasonic multi-up side sealing, the line has a guaranteed production speed up to 900 ppm.

The Innovision Machinery is a new diaper concept based on a new open baby diaper machine with excellent performance levels and high quality products for end users. The features of the machine provide new solutions for raw materials and innovative combinations of ultrasonic thermal bonding technologies. There are seven features including glueless cuffs, a lamination system with integrated tape; glueless frontal tape; intermittent SAP & X-THRUE Core Control System; glueless leg elastics and narrow poly; glueless ADL and a fluffless core.

Also new to Fameccanica is Easylife, a new original suite created by Fameccanica and Microsoft, which allows users to manage their plants in a simpler way. This “company collaboration network” facilitates the management of factories and manufacturing plants through the collection, exchange, distribution and use of ordered information, guaranteeing a significant advantage both in performance optimization and economic terms, allowing easy non-stop monitoring production plant performance.

With Easylife, all operating data from factories and individual plants are collected, laid out in a timeline, processed and shared among the different organizational roles, in total safety guaranteed by the Azure cloud, developed by Microsoft and integrated with Office.

“Many of our customers, especially the medium-sized companies, are interested in the Fameccanica Easylife platform,” says sales manager Alessandro D’Andrea. “This provides for them the answer to a need that they evidently have. Easylife is an opportunity to approach the problem in their companies with their internal IT with much higher resources.”

With sales globally, Fameccanica has a clear global picture of the hygiene market. D’Andrea is witnessing strong growth in adult incontinence in the west and overall growth in developing markets, which is more evident in baby and feminine hygiene.

Fameccanica has always developed technologies for the different product categories considering for each of them a number of platforms from the medium to the highest performances.
For example, the company has a series (Business, Evolution and Premium) and this has not changed for years.

“We may just simply say that we use a similar approach for all of them. Of course the products are different and the needs may change over the years, but the product cycles of innovation may be different and are driven by the producers,” D’Andrea adds.
www.fameccanica.com

Fujian Peixin
Fujian Peixin Machine Manufacture Industry has been in the hygiene products industry for more than 30 years. The company has focused on baby/adult diaper machinery, sanitary napkin machinery, underpad/pet mattress machinery, tissue converting machinery and more. Recently, Fujian Peixin has designed a full servo elastic waistband baby diaper production line featuring high production speeds with materials non-stop auto-splicing and ease of running while maintaining with high stability and a remote control system that can be controlled and detected at the Peixin company. The new machine can produce elastic waistband baby diapers that are tension adjustable with good elasticity.

Peixin has introduced a Full-servo Full-function Elastic Back Ear Baby Diaper Production Line.

The line produces S, M, L and XL size baby diapers with elastic side panels. The production speed is 350-400 pieces per minute. With an optional auto bagging machine, the packaging speed reaches as high as 50 packs per minute. The full-servo auto-controlling system is the core for customers to upgrade their factory into an energy-efficient, automated and reliable place for baby care products output. Customers can also request camera monitoring systems to conduct on-line size checking, location inspecting, etc. Other requests can be tailor-made in order to design the best solutions for the customers.

Peixin’s Full-servo Control Underpad Production Line is designed with a speed that reaches 300 meters/min. The machine is able to make three-ply (PE film, fluff pulp, nonwoven) or five-ply (PE film, down tissue, fluff pulp, upper tissue, nonwoven) bed mattress and pet mattress with high speeds requested by manufacturers.  The production line achieves a high degree of automation with built-in software systems and user-friendly interfaces that collects key data for operational improvements and smooths setup processes for technicians. Optional testing systems for size measurement and visual inspections are available.
www.peixin.com

Quanzhou Hanwei Machinery
Hanwei recently launched the HW-NK-1200 full servo zero gap sanitary napkin machine. The new machine offers a high speed, high efficiency, visualized, intelligent full service control system. Its power and control center is in a centralized management, modularity design.

It also provides a quality detection system, zero speed automatic splicing system and the complete machine is equipped wit ha phase control and detection system. New fluff core forming technology provides rapid adsorption and quick diffusion. Other advantages of the machine include easy transformation and upgrading while zero gap producing minimizes raw material waste.
www.han-wei.com

Curt G. Joa
Entering its 86th year, Curt G. Joa, Inc., continues to find ways to help customers improve their production processes. One of the newest offerings is Joa’s Continuous Machine Operations Strategy (CMOS) program, which relies on the process technology inherent in its machines.

With increasing customer expectations and price pressures, Joa developed this eight-week, on-site program to teach customer employees new ways to troubleshoot, prevent future breakdowns and monitor their machines. CMOS is not intended to be a training program, but rather a collaboration to help employees develop new practices and strategies.

Available with new machines or on an installed base, CMOS is proven to increase uptime and reduce scrap.

About a decade ago, Joa began seeing a push for data collection from the industry. In response, Joa has developed one of the most robust data collection systems in the industry.

Today, Joa offers a custom vision inspection system tailored to each customer’s specific product. This means inspections based on each product feature and manufacturing process, allowing customers to track rejects, product tolerances, historical data and other critical machine data.

Joa has seen a recent shift toward Industry 4.0. Although that expression can be misused, it basically means that customers are looking for machines that can run hours without relying on operator intervention.

To build cooperation between human and cyber-physical systems, Joa offers its Waste Stream Management technologies, which automatically corrects the manufacturing process without stopping the machine. Every machine stop and restart results in lost material and production time for a customer, so Joa developed a system to identify product defects and automatically trigger corrections. These corrections apply to the cuff fold, cuff elastic, acquisition layer and stretch film processes.
www.joa.com

Zuiko
Zuiko is constantly working to provide a solution to its customers’ needs, says Curtis Woo. “We cannot mention anything substantive regarding the features our customers’ are requesting, but we can mention that we are constantly working on new processing and product technology to satisfy customer requests,” he says. “Whatever customers deem a problem or in need of an improvement, Zuiko works to provide a solution.”

Machine manufacturers are challenged to help educate the beginning customer so they can make a fair and educated decision about their investment. Usually, in the beginning, customers underestimate the amount of time, energy, skill and finance it takes to purchase, install and run a diaper or sanitary napkin machine successfully. Zuiko provides information about the entire project scope to help guide customers during their decision-making before, during and after the sale is complete.

“As long as demand for diapers and sanitary napkins grow, we believe demand for machines will also grow. The mission for Zuiko is to continue being a part of the growth,” Woo says.

However, competition is consistently strong. “There are  many disposable hygiene converting machine manufacturers in the industry each with different technologies, abilities, focus and standards,” he says.
www.zuiko.co.jp