Our Expanding Air Shafts are equipped with Nylon keys for locking cardboard cores, or rubber keys for locking plastic or metal cores.
They are suitable for use with both full reels and very narrow reels.
They feature five or more removable keyrows with independent air tubes, each equipped with its own retention valve.
If one or more air tubes lose pressure, the remaining ones will stay inflated and operations will continue uninterrupted in any case.
The repair of the damaged keyrow can be postponed until later.
The damaged keyrow is easily identifiable being it the only one deflated, and it can be replaced in a few seconds with a spare one simply by unscrewing 2 cup screws, without stopping ongoing production.
Air tubes, Nylon strips, keys, springs and valves are all included and assembled in each spare removable keyrow.
They don’t have the pumping effect common in air shafts where one or more air tubes are linked. Indeed, while the shaft is rotating, the weight of the reel does not push air from one air tube to another, ensuring even the heaviest reels remain perfectly centered, even at very high speeds.
All air tubes can be inflated and deflated simultaneously with a single operation, just like in common air shafts.
They secure the core along its entire width and expand uniformly, ensuring continuous contact between the air shaft and the core, even with irregular cores.
They are extremely lightweight: an aluminium shaft with 1,6 mt body length suitable for 6″ ID cores weighs only 24 kgs.
Inflated to 6 bar, they can transmit a torque of 190 daNm per linear meter of a 3” cardboard core.