Tilsner Carton (CONT’D FROM PAGE 1)
wa America at SuperCorrExpo several years ago and was intrigued with Isowa’s Falcon and Ibis flexo folder gluers. Sander arranged an opportunity to see the machines in operation at Jayhawk Boxes, a division of Lawrence Pa- per Company, in Fremont Nebraska, where the company has had multiple Isowa machines going back more than a decade. “After our tour of Jayhawk, I realized we weren’t ready for an Isowa yet,” recalls Mackley. “We were, however, blown away by the four-minute set ups and run speeds of 15,000 SPH. We were there for four hours and saw them run 19 orders. I’ll never forget it. And the operators didn’t
ing high school and working in the plant during college breaks. He started full-time over 32 years ago, joining his father, Len, and working his way up the ladder. He remem- bers the “early years,” when his dad and Joel dove into manufacturing around 1989 — prior to that, Tilsner’s work was in used and misprinted boxes, stock boxes, pallets, and shipping supplies — when they went down to Chica- go to buy used equipment that would make boxes. The two entrepreneurs secured, in no particular order, “an old press or two, a unitizer, a band saw, a taper, and a flat bed die cutter.” The company grew to include printing, die cutting, and POP displays, and formed another entity, Meridian
Display, which is “under roof” in the 200,000-square-foot facility Tilsner Carton Company has been operating in since 1986, just out- side of downtown St. Paul. “If we’re not moving forward, we’re getting left behind,” says Owner and President Joel Tilsner. “That has always been my belief,
Joel Tilsner
and it continues to drive the company to new levels of growth and excellence in satisfying our loyal customers, some of whom have been with us forty years or more.” ‘Peeling The Onion’ For Tilsner Carton, the process of moving forward comes the removal of older and less efficient equipment to make room for the newer, faster, and better equipment to carry the company into the future. Tilsner Carton is in the process of disassembling and removing an old S&S flexo that was built in 1982 and has been on the production floor for more than 30 years.
even seem to be working hard. They were so well trained and knew their roles. They made running the machine look easy.” To be clear, the 19 orders Mackley references included a die cut changeover and multiple print jobs. Jayhawk ran close to a million feet on their Isowa Ibis in the four hours Tilsner’s people were there. “We were truly amazed,” adds Mackley, who mentions that sticker shock, as well as other machinery issues on Tilsner’s production floor, caused Joel Tilsner to “pump the brakes” on the Isowa purchase. Since the upgrades on Tilsner’s old rotary die cutter were going to be more than a million dollars, it started to make more sense to look at a new machine: an Apstar 4-color rotary die cutter with an AG Stacker on the back end. “We saw run speeds increase and set up times go down with the new equipment, but a year later our old ‘meat and potato’ die cutter that everyone seemed to have back in the day was breaking down and we couldn’t find anyone to repair it,” says Mackley. This led to purchasing a new Bobst Vision Cut flatbed die cutter, which reduced set-up times by half but didn’t quite double run speeds. CONTINUED ON PAGE 48 An Alliance Feedmax prefeeder, added to the front end of the Ibis, provides as much capacity as the high-speed flexo folder gluer can handle.
“We started looking at what we were doing on set ups and run speeds on the old 38-inch and began ‘peeling off the layers of the onion,’” says Mackley. “We redeveloped our processes and had some wins, but ultimately realized that the S&S was only going to take us so far, so we started looking at more efficient machines.” Mackley recalls his meeting with Scott Sander of Iso- An Apstar 4-color rotary die cutter with AG Stacker on the back end handles a significant amount of Tilsner’s die cut print jobs.
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April 28, 2025
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