Reduce Changeover Time and Increase Production with Rafted Roll Stands

What is Rafting and How Can It Improve Your Productivity and Profitability?

In any roll forming operation, the process of changing tooling to run different products is one of the leading causes of machine downtime and lost production. On a traditional driven stand roll former design, the process of changing over roll stands one at a time is incredibly time consuming. And in large mills with multiple sets of tooling or changeovers per week, this can result in significant downtime and lost production. Depending on your operation, rafting can be the solution to both of these problems.

Rafting involves mounting your roll stands on a removable subplates called “rafts” and setting up your machinery to handle these rafts. When implemented, rafting allows you to change a group of roll stands at once, instead of switching out rolls one at a time — dramatically reducing changeover time which, in turn, can significantly increase your production and profitability.

Whether you have a set of rafts for each product you make or change your roll stands on offline rafts while the current product is still running on the line, rafting can be a worthwhile investment for your operation that pays for itself in a very short time in productivity and profitability gains.