Recent improvements of the Kloften & Kloften

Strip Splicer

June, 1995

Issue No.7

1. Two Step Splicing.

The method described in Issue No. 6 has been improved further by introducing a second timer to control the heat cycle.

This is particularly important in cases where one carrier strip is narrower than the other, but even with two carriers of the same width it is helpful to be able to control the heat to the two carriers individually. The top electrode will namely already be warm (from the first splice) when transferred to the second position, requiring a somewhat shorter heat cycle for optimum result.

The better control has the added advantage that Tungsten Carbide electrodes may now, in many cases be used instead of carbon brushes, resulting in much less maintenance.

The digital timers used are of a type which may be adjusted to the nearest one hundredth of a second.

We have earlier introduced individual control of the solder feed in the front and in the rear, so that we now are able to control both solder feed and heat individually for the two carrier strips.

2. Using Tungsten Carbide electrodes when splicing wide tapes.

The method described under (2) in Issue No. 6 has also been improved further by using Tungsten Carbide electrodes instead of carbon brushes.

To do this it was necessary to increase the heating current considerably, while still keeping the length of heating pulse short.

Since the electrodes will be cold when the first current pulse is started, while they will have warmed up somewhat prior to the subsequent pulses, it was necessary to make the first pulse longer than the rest.

Due to the local, and short duration heating, very little, if any discoloration results. Also, the annealing effect is minimal.