Production of board and packaging paper with new former type

Increasing output and the general trend towards low basis weights lead to high operating speeds also in the production of board and packaging papers, This paper presents a new gap former concept developed by Voith Sulzer Paper Technology offering a wide application spectrum from low to very high basis weights. The first gap former for multi-ply special board is a milestone in the gap former technology and demonstrates the flexibility of the concept, The paper describes the design of the new formers and their technological and operational characteristics. Furthermore, combinations with one or several top ply gap formers will be explained and the first operational and test results for packaging papers will be presented.