Static Control for Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing

Roll-to-Roll (R2R) manufacturing is used extensively in printing and flexible packaging industries. These commercially important markets exceeded $30B USD annually in the US in 2019 with employment of about 79,000. In addition, R2R operations are increasingly used to produce flexible electronic products and medical devices, which are easily damaged by electrostatic discharges (ESD). Many materials used in R2R operations such as polypropylene are insulating making them prone to accumulating static charges. Sparks from accumulated charges can ignite fires, injury employees, and damage products. Accumulated charges also cause static cling, which can disrupt machine operations. I estimate that waste caused by static electricity from injuries, damaged products, and machine downtime exceeds $600M USD annually in the US. This human suffering and waste may be eliminated by effective static control systems. Implementing effective static control on an R2R manufacturing line is a 4-step, data-driven process. First, identify sources of static charging with a static survey. Next, install static dissipaters forming a fault-tolerant, static control system. Once static dissipaters are operational, verify that static is well controlled with second static survey. Lastly, maintain static performance by regularly verifying static performance and by including static control in Management of Change procedures.