Standard for maximum number of splices/joins

[Katherine]

Hi everyone- Happy 2019.
We are seeing our waste numbers grow on certain jobs due to a high number of factory splices on our raw materials, and then a restriction on the maximum number of splices we can supply to our top consumer product customers in our rolls of printed labels.

Does anyone know if there is an Industry standard for maximum number of splices/joins; both for the supply of raw materials and for the supply of finished rolls of printed material?

Obviously we don't want to supply rolls that are likely to cause web breaks during application, but we also don't want to lose labels to the bin simply because we had waste or cleaning and to complete a roll would require 4 splices instead of 3- so all of the labels have to be dumped.

Thanks as always for any assistance/advice.

Katherine

[wdustin1]

We always ask the customer outright, how many splices would you accept? Obviously we would keep them to a minimum but worst case scenario stuff. Most of them are pretty forgiving, most of the auto applied people have said 4 MAX, but others that don't auto apply don't care at all.

[Katherine]

Thanks for the reply. THis is how we approach it as well, but our customer's roll sizes are getting larger and the number of allowed splices are getting smaller

[Frank Burgos]

Wow. That is highly problematic.

I don’t know about a standard, but you never know. There are standards on everything.

I’ve heard where customers want no splices but take reasonably small rolls. I’ve heard one splice per roll and three splices per roll. Can’t say anything about the roll lengths or minimum number of feet without a splice.

It seems to me that you need to have your supplier provided splice-free rolls. Even if paying a premium, you may be better off that all the waste that results from these criteria.

[Katherine]

Thanks for the feedback- the issue isn't resolved, but at least I am pretty sure there is nothing that is a set standard in our industry..other than what the customer wants :)

[RedsInABox]

Set a requirement from your raw material supplier to say "will accept X amount of splices per roll but prefer 0". If your customer is requiring larger rolls and you're having issues not having that many splices in your master rolls are there printability issues on press that need to be addressed in order to limit the stops in said rolls? If we're having issues with stops on our machines, we attack the printability issues so that way we can run longer, bigger master rolls without stops and the only thing finished rolls have in them when they go out are roll change splices/joins. In the multiple shops I've worked at we always requested no splices in our raw material for this reason specifically but we would work around and accept one here or there without much resistance.

[Katherine]

Set a requirement from your raw material supplier to say "will accept X amount of splices per roll but prefer 0". If your customer is requiring larger rolls and you're having issues not having that many splices in your master rolls are there printability issues on press that need to be addressed in order to limit the stops in said rolls? If we're having issues with stops on our machines, we attack the printability issues so that way we can run longer, bigger master rolls without stops and the only thing finished rolls have in them when they go out are roll change splices/joins. In the multiple shops I've worked at we always requested no splices in our raw material for this reason specifically but we would work around and accept one here or there without much resistance.

We have been working on this..older presses that are not perfect at holding the web are generally the issue - but not always - your points are very on target.
Thanks again for the ideas: )

[Gorilla Printer]

Hi Katherine
'
So what arrangement did you come to with your supplier?

For my shop, we don't accept rolls with more than 2 splices. And splices are not to be close to the core (there is an agreed distance).
Spliced rolls are issued to single-sided print jobs only. Which halves the distance when the print lockouts for splices occur-50 metres compared to 100 is a huge yield saving.

Cheers

Gorilla