Even the best felts can underperform without proper monitoring. The Feltest SpeedController gives you crystal-clear insight into felt performance by combining AirSpeed and TrueSpeed Sensor data. Spot issues early, reduce downtime, and optimize your trials, all from one smart instrument.

Here's your step-by-step guide to getting started with the SpeedController.

As a papermaker, the relationship with your machine clothing supplier is critical to the performance of your mill. Yet many mills still rely on a single supplier, leaving themselves exposed to potential issues.

Here are 5 characteristics to look for when selecting a new or additional paper machine clothing supplier: 

If you’ve read our previous blogs, this statement will come as no surprise: there isn’t a standard, universal metric for ‘correct’ felt permeability. This is because achieving optimal permeability is unique to each machine. And it’s determined by two sets of variables.

So how do you find the optimal felt permeability? Here’s how… 

Paper machine clothing can make or break a papermaker’s future – yet our industry’s attitude toward testing feels stuck in the past. With downtime and poor runnability costing thousands per hour, the stakes are high—and that breeds nervousness. It could lead to production managers over-relying on their supplier to test machine clothing performance.

In one way or another, we are all involved in getting the most out of our paper machines. More output means more profit for the company, more job security for us all and better chances for a promotion.

Where PMC trial theory meets practice… this is a case study about improving felt performance in a 200″ wide machine in a European paper mill.

This article is the follow-up on the previous article about how to maximize pmc value with this innovative mindset. 

After you install a new felt, it's normal for its dynamic permeability (the combination of airflow and vacuum) to fall. This means the felt is compacting. However, contamination will also make it denser. 

To distinguish between these two possible causes for a denser felt, you need to…

The batt's top layer should act as a one-way valve, allowing water to flow down towards the base, but not back up. Avoid excessive density to prevent dewatering issues at the nip entry. Learn why felt may become too dense and how to prevent it in the article.

The press felt's key role is to remove water from the sheet without damaging its strength or surface quality. However, unlike other machine components, press felts' permeability and behavior change over their lifetime… 

A lot of papermakers come to our website to learn about felt permeability and how it affects the performance of their paper machine. In this blog series, we share a simple breakdown of what felt permeability is, and why it matters. 

A mill in the Netherlands faced frequent breaks at the pickup roll, about 12 times daily, costing over 7% of production time. Despite trying weekly cleanings, changing doctor blades, and short circulation boil-outs, the breaks persisted. Read our blog to learn how to tackle these problems in-house. 

A mill in the Netherlands faced frequent breaks at the pickup roll, about 12 times daily, costing over 7% of production time. Despite trying weekly cleanings, changing doctor blades, and short circulation boil-outs, the breaks persisted. Read our blog to learn how to tackle these problems in-house. 

Designing a successful press felt is an art form. One that requires a careful blend of technical expertise, data, and gut feeling from a real human—the press felt designer. I believe a greater understanding of the complexity of press felts is key to unlocking innovation—and in turn, helping papermakers produce more paper.

It’s the perceived cost and risk of running PMC trials that causes our industry to play it safe. But this status quo chains papermakers to their PMC suppliers, killing innovation and the long-term survival of the mill. We need to break this dangerous paper production habit.

Focusing on innovation maximizes value from paper machine clothing, and in return, will future proof your mill. While PMC tests and trials may seem inconvenient, they are profitable long-term. Consider these three key principles for PMC trials. Each paper machine is unique, so apply these principles to your specific situation.

A 1960s graphic paper machine in the Netherlands, running at 150% of its design speed, faced numerous vibration issues. The fourth press caused felt life to drop to two weeks, and press roll covers lasted just 4-6 weeks, with excessive wear on the granite counter roll. Read more to learn how felt life increased from 4 to 9 weeks.

When a forming fabric misaligns, it causes significant problems and costs, including potential destruction if it hits the machine frame. Continuous corrections lead to excessive wear and high expenses. This article explains fabric guiding principles and offers tips for papermakers to systematically solve guiding issues.

As 2022 ends, it's the perfect time to optimize your paper production. To help, we've launched three new products enabling daily felt tests in just 20 minutes. Gain more data and insights to enhance your paper machine output. 

Recently, we compared the results of another question held during a survey in our most recent and highly successful webinar, How to Assess Press Felts, to the results of the same question in a LinkedIn poll….Well, we ended up scratching our heads when we reviewed the results.

Press felts are the paper machine's lungs. Like a marathon runner with optimal breathing, ideal permeability ensures peak machine performance. However, despite the catchy phrase, "perfect permeability" for a press felt doesn't exist.