TKM. The Knife Manufacturers

For more than 100 years, the TKM Group as a family business, stands for quality and sustainability in products and services. As the world market leader, it is our ambition to develop highly efficient tools and solutions with innovative ideas and advanced technology, all while setting sustainable trends. The satisfaction of our customers, from the craftsman’s workshop to the global industrial company, has always been and still is the focus of our activities. We guarantee optimal customer proximity and competent support through our worldwide network of our own sales, service and production companies as well as through the high qualification and continuous training of our employees. Our motivation is, always, to find the best solution for our customers. We take knowledge and experience from many industries and apply it to our products and services for the tissue paper industry. We transfer these experiences to our customers, therefore increasing the quality of products, optimizing production times and reducing customer cost.

In the last editions of TissueMAG you find detailed articles about our well known Log Saw Blades and CBN grinding wheels. In this edition we focus on a product that causes a lot of downtime and adjustment time during installation: the bimetal anvil and perforation knife.

Summary

Each toilet paper and kitchen towel roll needs a perforation.
As a standard, four to six anvil knives work with one perforation knife. As the anvil knives cannot be adjusted individually, the width tolerance plays an important roll.
The same steel grades have been used for many years: M2-HSS and M42-HSS whereby TKM has focused on the higher quality M42-HSS for many years. Now there is the possibility of using an improved material.

Industrial knives for your production plan

The details

The main task for bimetal anvil knives is to achieve the longest possible life time with at the same time shortest possible adjustment time after a knife change. TKM works on that task from two sides:

1. Width Tolerance of the bimetal knives. The steel manufacturers deliver the bimetal coils with width tolerances of up to +/-0.03 mm. For a set of anvil knives, this means a possible difference of one knife to the other of up to 0.06 mm. Since the knives can only be adjusted as a complete set to the perforating knife, the anvil knives touch the perforation knife differently. This has two negative consequences: Firstly, one or several anvil knives wear faster as they touch the perforation knife with a higher impact.
   The entire set needs to be changed. Secondly, you as the customer have more difficulties and need more time to adjust the anvil knives to the perforation knife during the installation.
   The solution is to manufacture anvil and perforation knives with a width tolerance of +/-0,01 mm: the adjustment after the installation is shorter; the wear of all knives is lower. As a result, the converting line works with a higher efficiency.
2. Steel Grade of the bimetal knives. While superior steel grades were introduced in other industries many years ago, only two different HSS grades were available for bimetal knives for many years. TKM has recently introduced a higher quality steel for bimetal knives: the so-called powder-metal HSS. The steel has the following properties: Higher wear resistance compared to standard HSS; better toughness at the same hardness compared to standard HSS. In other applications, the powder-metal steel achieves up to twice the life time compared to standard HSS.

To achieve the best possible performance of your roll converting line we have combined a) and b) and sell the superior steel grade only with a width tolerance of +/-0,01 mm.

Contact TKM and try it out

During 2020 we added two more tools, to be closer to our customers: The TKM Group App, available for Apple and Android, includes a trouble shooting of the most common problems with the log saw blade application.
All our customers can use the app for free, try it out. To start, we build up a simple but efficient TKM performance centre. TKM performance centre is an easy access channel for our customers to industrial internet applications and remote services. Our experts have a deep understanding of the cutting applications of your tissue roll converting lines.

With remote connections and tools, we provide the needed support and guidance without delay – and more broadly than before. The relaunch of our website www.tkmgroup.com. The structure of the website has been completely adapted and designed to be more user-friendly, but not only that, it now offers our visitors an absolute added value.
In addition to our range of services, we offer you a detailed desktop solution manual. Discover more and visit our new Solution Finder now.