After more than twenty years of success, T-One passes the baton to the new TT-25, the tension controller that builds on Re’s experience and takes it into the future.
Some products are designed to perform a specific function. Others, over time, become part of a company’s history. They accompany thousands of production lines, span generations of technology, and earn the trust of machine builders and converters around the world.
For Re, one of those products has undoubtedly been T-One.
A benchmark in web tension control
For more than twenty years, it has been one of the benchmarks in web tension control for the converting industry. Reliable, intuitive and robust, T-One has adapted to hundreds of different applications, contributing to the success of thousands of machines installed worldwide. It became one of the longest-lasting and most appreciated tension controllers in Re’s history.
Replacing it was never going to be an easy decision.
“For a long time, we kept asking ourselves whether it was really time to turn the page. T-One was still doing its job flawlessly, and customers continued to trust it. But the market was changing, technology was evolving, and we knew we had to evolve with it,” the company states in a recent press release.
Over the last few years, the converting industry has undergone profound changes. Production lines have become increasingly automated, industrial communication systems have evolved, operators expect more intuitive interfaces, and modern processes demand faster response times and greater control accuracy.
The time had come to design a new tension controller. Not to replace T-One, but to carry its legacy forward. That is exactly how TT-25 was conceived.
Every design decision was built on the experience gained with its predecessor. Everything that made T-One one of the most appreciated tension controllers has been preserved. On those foundations, Re engineers developed a completely new tension controller designed to meet the demands of today’s and tomorrow’s industry.
More than an upgrade
TT-25 is far more than a hardware upgrade or a software update. It is the result of years of field installations, continuous dialogue with OEMs and converters, and thousands of hours of engineering experience gained alongside customers. Every new feature has been developed to solve real production challenges observed directly on machines and in manufacturing plants.
“Throughout the entire development process, we kept asking ourselves the same question: if a customer who has been using T-One for ten years tried TT-25, they should immediately recognise the same reliability and instantly notice everything it can now do even better.”
Among the most significant innovations is the new advanced PID algorithm, developed to deliver faster response times and higher control accuracy, even in the most demanding applications.
The human-machine interface has been completely redesigned. A new 4-inch colour touchscreen, an intuitive graphical interface and multilingual navigation make configuration, diagnostics and monitoring easier than ever, even for less experienced operators.
Connectivity has also taken a significant step forward. Thanks to native PROFINET and EtherCAT communication, TT-25 integrates seamlessly into modern industrial automation architectures, simplifying communication with PLCs and supervisory systems.
Perhaps the most important innovation, however, is its design philosophy. TT-25 was not developed as a single controller, but as a unified platform capable of adapting to a wide variety of applications. The four available versions cover tension control with load cells or dancer rollers, modular brake management, electromagnetic powder brakes, and motor-driven unwinders, rewinders and traction systems, providing the most suitable solution for every machine architecture.
The controller adapts to the application
“We didn’t want customers to adapt their machines to the controller. We wanted the controller to adapt to the application.”
TT-25 marks the beginning of a new chapter in Re’s history. A project that brings together more than fifty years of expertise in web tension control and carries a clear ambition: to become, for the next generation of machine builders and converters, what T-One has been for the previous one.
“The day we decided to discontinue T-One was also the day we realised how important the TT-25 project really was. Taking over the legacy of such a successful product is both a great responsibility and a privilege.”