Patent ID: 8196497
Filing Date: 2012-06-12
Classification: A61F,B65H,Y10S,Y10T

Abstract:
1. A method of controlling the length of a discrete segment of an elastic web in a web handling system, said method comprising: unwinding a continuous web of elastic material from a wound roll of said continuous web; determining a wound off tension of said continuous web as said continuous web is being unwound from said wound roll; delivering the unwound continuous web in a machine direction from said wound roll to a processing station while maintaining the web in tension for at least part of the distance traveled by the web from the wound roll to the processing station, a discrete segment of the web having a segment length at said processing station; transporting the discrete segment of the web away from the processing station along said machine direction for at least a time t wherein the discrete segment decreases in machine direction length from said segment length to a recovered length after leaving said processing station; predicting, based at least in part on said wound off tension of said continuous web, the recovered length of the discrete segment at said time t after leaving the processing station; and controlling, in response to the predicted recovered length of the discrete segment, at least one of 1) the speed at which the continuous web is delivered from the wound roll to the processing station, 2) the tension in the continuous web as the web is delivered from the wound roll to the processing station, and 3) the segment length of the discrete segment at the processing station.