Picking a Winner

Mark Fortin, president of Double E Company, points out that the first considerations when specifying shafts has to be structural safety. “That means that the shaft, as a beam, has to be capable of safely supporting the intended roll weight at the design speed of the machine,” he says. “For this, it is important to know the operating conditions that will result in the highest stress and deflection of the shaft. When a machine user plans on running multiple web widths, the heaviest roll will very often not represent the worst shaft bending case.”