Long Seams & Large Panels
Curtain walls and warehouse dividers can extend across large spaces, creating long horizontal or vertical seams and significant material-handling requirements.
Manufacturing industrial curtains, warehouse dividers and flexible barriers can require long panel seams, clear vision sections, reinforced edges, hems, attachment details and large flexible assemblies that become more difficult to handle as fabrication progresses.
The right welding equipment depends on the curtain design, material, seam requirements, production volume and how the material needs to move through production.
Curtain walls and warehouse dividers can extend across large spaces, creating long horizontal or vertical seams and significant material-handling requirements.
Clear PVC windows may be joined to reinforced opaque curtain material while maintaining clean alignment and a consistent finished appearance.
Perimeter hems, chain or rope pockets, reinforced edges, webbing and attachment areas add operations beyond the basic panel seam.
Repeated products require consistent seam placement while reducing the time spent supporting, repositioning and realigning large assemblies.
Vinyl curtain manufacturers use several established welding methods. The best choice depends on seam length, material handling, required flexibility, production volume and the operations that need to be completed.
Produces short, medium and long thermoplastic welds using programmed thermal packets under pressure. The full seam beneath the bar is welded simultaneously, so when the selected bar length spans the required curtain seam, the entire seam can be completed in one welding cycle.
A well-established method for vinyl fabrication. Heated air is introduced as the welding head travels along the seam, making hot air adaptable for long runs, hems and other continuous operations.
RF welding is well established for PVC and other suitable dielectric materials and can produce fast, repeatable curtain welds.
A heated wedge transfers energy between the material layers while the welder travels along the seam. Wedge welding can work well for continuous overlaps and hems along straight or curved welding paths.
Some acoustic, insulated or non-thermoplastic curtain constructions are primarily sewn, and sewing may also remain useful for selected hardware or attachment operations.
For long curtain seams, it is useful to separate the weld cycle itself from indexing, travel and repositioning.
Novaseal® Packet Welding™ systems are available with sealing bars up to 30 feet long. The complete seam beneath the selected bar length is welded simultaneously. Cycle time does not increase simply because the seam is longer.
RF welding can be very fast on short compatible seams, but longer seams may require additional indexed welds and material repositioning.
Hot-air and hot-wedge welding travel along the seam, so welding time increases with seam length according to travel speed.
Novaseal offers several ways to match equipment to the job, including Packet Welding™ systems, Custom Heat Sealing Systems, handheld and integrated wedge-welding systems, localized welding equipment, automation, upgrades, conversions, repurposing of existing machinery, and refurbished or reconditioned equipment when available.
TableTop and Standard systems support panel seams, clear sections, hems, pockets, reinforcement and attachment work. Gantry systems provide infinite-throat capability for oversized assemblies where moving the welding head can simplify product handling.
The GT-100 provides a genuinely handheld wedge-welding path for portable fabrication, repair and detail work. Novaseal® Integrated Wedge Welding Systems provide an application-specific, non-handheld approach where continuous travel, dedicated guidance or integrated material handling benefits the process.
The NovaHEAT™ Patch Welder handles localized reinforcement, attachment areas and repeated shaped welds. Custom Heat Sealing Systems can be engineered for smaller or shaped windows, pouches and other tooling-defined details where a straight bar weld is not the best fit.
Existing Novaseal equipment can be evaluated for modernization and Packet Welding upgrades. Suitable RF equipment may be repurposed to operate as a Packet Welder while retaining usable machine structure. Refurbished or reconditioned equipment provides another path when the right machine is available.
When curtain production includes several welding operations, manufacturers can select a bar length around the longest practical seams they expect to produce and the production capacity the investment needs to support.
When the selected bar spans the required seam, the full seam can be welded simultaneously in one cycle. That same machine can also perform shorter seams, clear-window work, attachments, reinforcement, pockets, hems and other welding operations throughout the product.
Packet Welding™ heat seals the vinyl and PVC-based materials widely used in industrial curtain manufacturing, including reinforced vinyl-coated fabrics, clear flexible PVC sections and multiple material thicknesses within the same finished curtain.
Packet Welding™ can also weld dissimilar thermoplastic materials together. For industrial curtain production, that can include joining clear vinyl to reinforced colored vinyl, as well as suitable combinations of vinyl and vinyl-alternative materials, such as vinyl to polypropylene.
The same Packet Welding system can also heat seal a broad range of vinyl-alternative and PVC-free thermoplastic materials using application-specific settings. Manufacturers can continue producing established vinyl products while also evaluating alternative materials without automatically adding a separate welding platform.
Novaseal can evaluate your material, seam requirements, current process and production goals to help determine which welding approach and equipment setup best fits your industrial curtain, partition or barrier production.
If you have material samples, drawings or photos, seam dimensions or a production challenge you want to improve, send what you have. We can work from there.