Patent ID: 7618004

Claim:
An unwinding device to unwind reels of web material, comprising: a first unwinding member and a second unwinding member to simultaneously unwind a first reel and a second reel; a splicing device to join together a first web material coming from said first reel and a second web material coming from said second reel; a first accumulation member associated to said first unwinding member and a second accumulation member associated to said second unwinding member to accumulate the web material delivered from one of said first reel or said second reel before splicing with web material delivered from another one of said first reel or said second reel during a transitional acceleration phase of said one of said first reel or said second reel; a first delivery path extending from said first unwinding member to said first accumulation member and a second delivery path extending from said second unwinding member to said second accumulation member, said first delivery path and said second delivery path extending across said splicing device; a first path for the first web material and a second path for the second web material for simultaneous delivery of both said first web material from said first reel and said second web material from said second reel respectively towards a downstream machine, and when two reels are present, simultaneously on the first unwinding member and the second unwinding member and unwound in parallel and rotate simultaneously and deliver the web material concurrently for an entire unwinding cycle; wherein said first unwinding member and said second unwinding member are arranged to alternatively: either unwind one of said first reel and said second reel while maintaining another one of said first reel and said second reel in a standby condition and splice one of said first web material and said second web material to another one of said first web material and said second web material when said one of said first reel and said second reel requires replacement to deliver a single web material to said downstream machine; or simultaneously unwind and deliver to said downstream machine both said first web material and said second web material.