Strictly-Extrusion

In only three months since market introduction, Davis-Standard’s “Super Blue ™” extruder has lived up to its promise of value, high performance and fast delivery. Davis-Standard has sold many Super Blue extruders to date, primarily for profile applications, but has also received much interest from fiber, specialty system and sheet processors. Plastics Extrusions, Inc., a division of LTI Flexible Products, of Elkhart, Indiana, was one of the first to purchase a Super Blue. The 3 1/2-inch (90mm) extruder supplied with
Davis-Standard’s barrier screw technology has more than tripled the company’s production rate for its largest profile from 3 feet per minute to 10 feet per minute (.9 to 3 meters per minute). The Super Blue processes a variety of low durometer vinyl, engineered thermoplastics and vulcanates for Plastics Extrusions’ trim and seal products sold to the RV, marine and automotive aftermarket industries. Plastics Extrusions is the premier seal manufacturer for these markets.
“In the past we’ve sacrificed throughput because of the low durometer and processing parameters of the materials we run,” said Norm Newhouse, general manager at Plastics Extrusions. “The Super Blue processes these materials so efficiently that it has provided additional capacity without additional capital investment.”
The delivery timeline for the Super Blue is two weeks from the order date. With such a short lead time, Davis-Standard has a designated production team to ensure quality control throughout the process. Davis-Standard’s team continues

to exceed delivery expectations by completing the electrical, mechanical, parts assembly and testing procedures in as early as one week. The efficiencies of the Super Blue manufacturing process reflect the integration of Davis-Standard’s Six Sigma strategy to improve operational performance.
Newhouse added, “The extruder has exceeded our expectations and the delivery was excellent. It is a great value as advertised. Brad Sprague, the
Davis-Standard sales engineer who sold us the Super Blue, did an excellent job of addressing our needs. Davis-Standard has set the bar for sales, service and quality.”
The Super Blue is available in 2-inch (50mm), 2 1/2-inch (65mm), 75mm and 3 1/2-inch (90mm) sizes, each with a 24:1 L/D ratio. The extruder is equipped with preferred features including a low noise, high torque double-reduction gearbox; cast aluminum finned heaters bolted to the barrel; an AC drive and motor; and a high capacity air cooling system. Design advantages include a rigid base with structural steel construction; a wear-resistant bimetallic barrel designed for 10,000 psi operating pressure with removable barrel flange, rupture disc and pressure transducer; a modular, “inverted-L” style control panel for improved accessibility; and a gear drive reducer with heavy-wall, two-piece iron housing and single helical gearing. The Super Blue is standard with a three-year warranty and is available with a wide range of DSB® barrier screw designs.
For more information about Super Blue extruders, contact Wendell Whipple at wwhipple@davis-standard.com.

Klockner Pentaplast of America will more than double its North American production capacity for shrink-label films. A new film tentering line for transverse-direction orientation (TDO) will be located at the company’s Rural Retreat plant. Start-up is targeted for March 2004. Shrink label films are used for full-body shrink-sleeve labels, bottle capsule (cap seal), tamper-evident bands, and multi-pack applications. These films are typically printed to provide food and consumer products with 360-degree graphics. The TDO films are currently available in PVC, PET, and Barex modified acrylonitrile polymer.

Tripack Films has succeeded in securing a Rs 1 billion (US$21.8 million) deal from a local bank, the Muslim Commercial Bank, to finance a new BOPP line expansion project to increase production by 16,000 tonnes.
Tripack Films is the largest producer of BOPP (biaxially-oriented polypropylene) film in Pakistan. The company is a joint venture between Mitsubishi Corp. of Japan and Packages Limited of Pakistan. Two lines are currently located in Hattar Industrial estate in the northern province area and have an annual capacity of 10,800 tonnes. These two lines, which produce three-layer BOPP film, were supplied by Mitsubishi Corp. of Japan.

Conforma Clad, a provider of wear-resistant metal components, has expanded its range of twin-screw extruder barrels. Said Randall Dooley, senior application engineer, “Historically, we have offered a full-line of wear-protected, Coperion ZSK-style extruder barrels. Due to customer demand, we’ve made a concerted effort to extend our tungsten carbide wear protection to other types of corotating, segmented twin-screw extruder barrels. In addition to replacement barrels for Coperion extruders, Conforma Clad now offers wear-resistant replacement barrels and liners for equipment made by Berstorff, Clextral, Davis-Standard/JSW, Leistritz, Theysohn, and NFM/Toshiba.” Conforma Clad liners consist of tungsten carbide material that is metallurgically bonded to a 4140 steel substrate. The combination reportedly provides added ductility, virtually eliminating failures commonly associated with rigid liners, such as weld separation or “collapse” of sleeves. Conforma Clad proprietary tungsten carbide formulas can also be applied to single-screw segments, dies, mixing hardware, material-handling equipment, and other components exposed to abrasive materials. For more information, visit www.conformaclad.com

The Industrial Extruder division of APV Baker has now added software that allows today’s extruders to be supported by a selection of operator interfaces and data logging systems, which allow integration into a total management information system. HMI (Human Machine Interface) and SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) together can provide a complete view of the production process at a central point, and offer real time and historical trending, maintenance monitoring and recipe control. Within a plastics twin-screw extrusion operation, real time data can be available at the HMI, which features a touch-screen, with full data capture facility allowing recording of all running parameters and multiple views of the process through different screens. Data might typically include: temperature of the barrel and the product in process; the pressure of product in the extruder; vacuum levels; speed of the extruder screw; torque of the main drive; mass flow rate of all feed materials; volume flow rate of liquid additions; and product properties. Process parameters measured can include temperature, speed, pressure, flow and torque; and product parameters that can now be measured include bulk density, colour, moisture, shape and size.

Coperion Corp. has decided to end 27 years of U.S. manufacturing of Werner & Pfleiderer compounding extruders, as the company announced another round of layoffs in Ramsey. Coperion is moving the Ramsey extruder manufacturing operations to the German headquarters plant in Stuttgart, Germany. About 45 jobs will be cut in early December. Those cuts follow an earlier move to ax 25 positions in Ramsey.

The new Battenfeld Gloucester Horizontal Oscillating Hauloff, with enhanced performance features, improves soft film processing. The Battenfeld H-nip is able to randomize even the most minor die, air ring, and tower film gauge effects, giving further assurance that wound rolls will be flat and of optimum converter quality. There is zero film contact on the turning bars, thereby minimizing any tendency to form stretch wrinkles.
The new design has a substantial base-mounted support bearing taken from the successful Traversanip Vertical oscillating hauloff. This strategy has a number of advantages unseen in the traditional overhead bearing of competitive horizontal oscillators.
The stable base and lower support bearing prevent the occurrence of nip roll ’sway’, commonly seen in some horizontal nips that utilize an overhead bearing. Battenfeld’s new H-nip design is also more compact than many competitive units, adding 5 - 30 inches (130 - 760 mm) to the die-to-nip distance without adding height to the tower. In tight retrofit applications the increased bubble cooling time this affords can be essential to processing soft and tacky films.
Additional performance features for this hauloff are simplified tower installation, thread ups that can be accomplished by a single-operator, and easy access to nip roll and collapser adjustments, all saving valuable time during installation, startup, and maintenance.

The SML-Sleeve-Touch technique combines the advantages of the chill-roll process, with those of the polishing stack technique and the water bath process. The films produced in this way have very good optical and mechanical properties, good flatness, low thermal shrinkage and a high-quality surface finish. By comparison to steel belt systems, the Sleeve-Touch technique permits thinner films to be produced, and a change of sleeve from a high-gloss to an embossing polishing belt can be performed considerably quicker. A switch in the process mode to chill-roll or conventional polishing stack can also be completed within a short period of time. A further advantage over steel belt technology is the fact that the melt emerges vertically from the die, directly into the sleeve gap. The technique also exhibits excellent flexibility in production: it is possible to switch the production mode between calender/chill-roll/sleeve in less than an hour, due to an innovative roll-stack design with different docking stations. In this way, the change can be made from calendering mode to sleeve or chill-roll mode by simply switching docking stations.

A new barrier screw design for injection molding and extrusion is said to overcome limitations of earlier designs by delivering higher throughput at lower melt temperatures. The patent-pending Fusion screw from Xaloy Inc. was originally developed by New Castle Industries, which Xaloy acquired in August. Processing trials with a 3.5-in. extruder and fractional-MI HDPE reportedly produced throughputs “up to 22% higher than those typically achieved with other barrier screws,” according to Tim Womer, engineering manager at Xaloy/New Castle. Melt temperatures were also relatively low (383 to 416 F at 125 rpm), he said. A unique feature of the screw is said to be a chaotic mixing action that thoroughly homogenizes the melt with little or no increase in its average temperature. Production trials show the Fusion screw to work with LDPE, HDPE, LLDPE, PP, PET, ABS, and PLA degradable polymer. www.xaloy.com

Klockner Pentaplast of America will more than double its North American production capacity for shrink-label films. A new film tentering line for transverse-direction orientation (TDO) will be located at the company’s Rural Retreat plant. Start-up is targeted for March 2004. Shrink label films are used for full-body shrink-sleeve labels, bottle capsule (cap seal), tamper-evident bands, and multi-pack applications. These films are typically printed to provide food and consumer products with 360-degree graphics. The TDO films are currently available in PVC, PET, and Barex modified acrylonitrile polymer.