Thomas Walther has worked with corrugated board for more than thirty years, approaching the material from every side it offers: as a substrate for direct offset printing, as a bonding partner for cold and hot melt adhesives, as a folding medium at the folder-gluer, and as a transport packaging material at the end of the supply chain. Each perspective revealed complexities that the previous one had hidden.
The material's continued ability to surprise an experienced practitioner is, in his view, the central reason it has held his attention so long. His professional home is Baumer hhs in Krefeld, a supplier of adhesive application and process monitoring technology for the corrugated and packaging industries. Specific systems from that portfolio appear in this book as illustrative examples, but the underlying argument is built on engineering principles rather than product specifications.
Any equivalent system from another supplier carries the argument equally well. This book began as a private project. The chapters evolved from notes the author wrote for himself to clarify his understanding of phenomena that the textbook chapters did not fully explain. The decision to publish came later, when the notes had grown into something he believed others working with the material might also benefit from.
In keeping with that origin, the book is sold at cost through a book-on-demand publisher rather than a conventional publishing house, as a contribution to a shared field of practice rather than as a commercial product. The author lives and works in Krefeld. He welcomes feedback, dissent and dialogue from anyone who has read the book; for him, the publication marks the beginning of a conversation rather than its conclusion.
The material's continued ability to surprise an experienced practitioner is, in his view, the central reason it has held his attention so long. His professional home is Baumer hhs in Krefeld, a supplier of adhesive application and process monitoring technology for the corrugated and packaging industries. Specific systems from that portfolio appear in this book as illustrative examples, but the underlying argument is built on engineering principles rather than product specifications.
Any equivalent system from another supplier carries the argument equally well. This book began as a private project. The chapters evolved from notes the author wrote for himself to clarify his understanding of phenomena that the textbook chapters did not fully explain. The decision to publish came later, when the notes had grown into something he believed others working with the material might also benefit from.
In keeping with that origin, the book is sold at cost through a book-on-demand publisher rather than a conventional publishing house, as a contribution to a shared field of practice rather than as a commercial product. The author lives and works in Krefeld. He welcomes feedback, dissent and dialogue from anyone who has read the book; for him, the publication marks the beginning of a conversation rather than its conclusion.
