The Challenge

The leading manufacturer of PVC-coated tents in Abu Dhabi reached out to us with a request to develop a continuous welding station that can produce wall panels for their extra-large tents. Their goal was to speed up their semi-automatic production cycles while creating durable yet visually appealing seams. The seams’ durability of was of utmost importance due to the safety issues involved with heavy PVC panels mounted on the tent structures.

The Solution

We developed a multiple-roll sealer that feeds the fabric from 2 motorized unwinding stations, including an automatic edge correction and digital fabric tension control to manage jumbo rolls. A high-power welding head installed in a central position on the bridge joins the panels together while two lateral heads apply a single or double-flag keder to either side of the fabric to fold the fabric into a pocket while automatically inserting a rope.

Additionally, we installed a camera near every welding head to enable the operator to continuously monitor the production process and the quality of the seams from a single control station. The machine grants easy access to all welding and cutting tools so that the operator can easily intervene should this be necessary.

Flat, Durable Seams. Increased production output.

As the seams – especially the overlap – are always in plain view, and the end products are extremely high-end tents, our customer required that the seams must not only be tough, but they must also be flat and visually pleasing. To achieve this, we installed motorized pullers before and after the welding bridge to keep the fabric under the right amount of tension.

Before implementing our automated solution, this customer used manual cutting devices with high frequency and impulse welders. By working with our continuous welding and cutting cycles of our machine, the company increased the hourly production output multiple times over.

The machine has been operating in our customer’s plant in Abu Dhabi since 2016.

Machines for Sun Protection – Case Studies  – Tents - Image 1