Extrusion
Take Good Care of Your Extrusion Pressure Transducers
Eight tips on installing and maintaining melt-pressure sensors in your extruder will help them last longer and give you fewer problems.
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Capacitance Thickness Gauges: New Designs Break Old Barriers
Economical, non-nuclear capacitance gauges are opening new markets in blown film—primarily in barrier films, where they previously suffered serious shortcomings. New gauge designs, and new ways of mounting them, make capacitance technology much more flexible.
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Latest Enterprise Software Features Enhanced Scheduling and Web Access
Until recently, plastics processors looking for fully featured enterprise 911±¬ÁÏÍø software may have been aware of only two choices that were tailored specifically for their needs.
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New High-Performance Nylons For Automotive, Electronics, Packaging
Nylon producer Ems-Grivory America in Sumter, S.C., is reaching beyond its traditional product range to bring out new partially aromatic nylons that bridge the gap between standard engineering thermoplastics and high-performance specialty polymers.
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The Man Who Kept Stretching
It's not unusual for an entrepreneur to sell a company, wait the required non-compete period, and then start up virtually the same company all over again.
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MDO Films: Lots of Promise, Big Challenges
Machine-direction orientation is still discovering new market opportunities. But the technical difficulties are so great that some big projects never came of age. New equipment could make it easier.
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K 2004 Extrusion: Outputs Rise, Downstream Units Gain Flexibility
The show was packed with new equipment for pipe and profile, including extruders redesigned for higher outputs and/or lower cost, plus new ways to adjust die and calibrator diameters or switch dies and calibrators more quickly.
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Shhh ... Can You Hear the New Extruder Motors?
Silent, space-saving, energy-efficient, and high-torque, a new generation of ring-shaped motors is gaining a foothold in extrusion. A couple of hundred are already in use. Though most machine builders are reacting cautiously, adventurous processors are using them happily.
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Chasing Nanocomposites
Nano-sized particles have mega-potential in plastics because just a pinch does so much more than heavy loadings of other additives. Three recent conferences presented almost 200 papers on the feverish pace of ‘nano’ R&D on boosting plastics’ mechanical and barrier properties, flame retardancy, and electrical conductivity.
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From Paper-Mill Sludge to Plastic Decking
Kadant Composites’ self-appointed mission for the past eight years has been to find commercial uses for paper sludge, a soggy mix of short cellulose fibers, calcium carbonate, and clay that is the copious byproduct of paper recycling.
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