Recent improvements of the Kloften & Kloften

Strip Splicer

January 26, 1998

Issue No.13

1. Improved Solder feed:

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The presently used solenoid stepper feeds the solder in steps of 0.8 mm, which for most applications in quite adequate. However, when splicing very narrow carrier strips it might be advantageous to use finer steps. For this reason we are changing to a true stepper motor which feeds solder in steps of about 0.1 mm. Since we are now using a PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) for the control of the splicer, we are also able to obtain a much more precise “retraction” of the solder to avoid protrusion.

2. Splicing wide carrier strips:

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Carrier strips up to 10 mm wide may be spliced using a “one shot” procedure. Wider carriers will require too much current from the transformer.

Wider strips may, however, be spliced using the same principle as used in our “Wide Strip” splicer, involving a curved upper electrode which travels along the splice in steps as current pulses are applied.

3. Splicing Stainless Steel:

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We have not been able to splice stainless steel using the standard “One Shot” method due to the fact that the flux, which is needed when splicing steel, tends to prevent a good contact between the two electrodes, causing a spark.

The use of the above mentioned “curved” upper electrode seems to overcome this problem (since we now have a “line” contact). We have made excellent splices with the use of a minute amount of flux.

This method should also be suitable for copper alloys (such as Beryllium Copper) which are difficult to splice without flux.

4. Splicing Wide Strips of Heavy Gauge.

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Several customers have shown interest in splicing wide and heavy gauge strips in front of the stamping presses, since wide strips have to be wound in “pancakes”, and a heavy gauge means short lengths on each pancake.

In the past we have not been able to splice thicknesses much above 0.5 mm, but we have found that by increasing the number of heat pulses per unit length of splice, and shortening the time between pulses, we seem to avoid cooling of the splice between pulses, thereby making it possible to splice strips up to 1.0 mm.

5. The United State’s Patent Office has now issued Patent No. 5,674,412 to Ragny and Sigmund Ege. This brings the total number of “Splicer” patent to 10 (seven US patents, one German and one British, listed on the back cover of the splicer plus the above one).

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