Extrusion-Pipe & Profile

Extrusion lines with fully integrated quality control systems can now be set up by an operator with an iPhone outside of a clean room.

The new technology will be on display at NPE2012 at the Boston Mathews (Norwood, NJ) booth in the West Hall, number 5862.

Coming to pharmacies this fall is a battery-operated ingestible pill that sends signals to a skin-mounted patch to indicate your response to medications, including heart rate, respiration and temperature.

Proteus Biomedical (Redwood City, CA) and Lloyds Pharmacy of the United Kingdom are launching Helius, a digital health product in the vanguard of a wireless revolution that will create an estimated $4 billion market in the healthcare field.

A precision assembly is helping ease incontinence and other medical problems caused by a variety of gynecologic conditions, including prolapse.

Engineers at MedPlast (Elkhorn, WI) developed a new approach to a product called pessary balloons that includes a molded part, a check ball and a glued-on silicone extrusion.

Polymera Inc. (Hebron, OH) is commercially producing wood and natural fiber polymer composite compounds after initiating installation of equipment in February of last year, meeting its estimated timeframe to fully outfit its 160,000-sq-ft manufacturing facility in central Ohio with 60 million pounds of WPC compound capacity.

Winners in the fast-growing and changing medical plastics market will be technology specialists. New quality, cost and regulatory demands are rapidly upping the ante for processors who want to participate.

In that spirit, here are a few areas of specialization coupled with upcoming educational opportunities.

Extrusion systems supplier Davis-Standard LLC (Pawcatuck, CT) was sold by private equity firm Hamilton Robinson and Davis-Standard management shareholders to ONCAP, the mid-market private equity platform of Toronto-based investment firm Onex. The deal, which closed on Dec. 23, 2011, was announced to the market on Jan. 4, 2012 and ends Hamilton Robinson's involvement with Davis-Standard.

Switzerland-based Georg Fischer announced the acquisition of Harvel Plastics Inc., an Easton, PA based pipe extruder. Georg Fischer said the acquisition represents another step in the implementation of its plant to expand its piping systems business worldwide. The company is acquiring 100% of the issued and outstanding shares of Harvel Plastics for approximately $50 million in cash.

A new grade of polyacrylate elastomer extrudes at a 50% faster rate while bringing the same level of heat and fluid resistance in charge air cooler (CAC) hoses for turbo diesel (TDi) or turbo gasoline applications and other high-performance automotive parts. Zeon Chemicals HyTemp AR212XP also reportedly offers improved extruder feeding and surface finish compared to the prior grade, HyTemp AR212HR.

In November 2011, battenfeld-cincinnati (Bad Oeynhausen, Germany; Vienna, Austria) presented the techBEX complete line concept for producing small technical profiles at an open house event staged by Italian partner company Fainplast s.r.l. (Ascoli Piceno). For its part, compound supplier Fainplast informed the 70 participants about its range of custom-made materials as well as optimal processing methods with an extrusion line from battenfeld-cincinnati.

Allan Griff, our Extrusion Expert, took on the growing phenomenon of "plastophobia" in his final Extrusion Expert webcast. Below are questions and answers taken from that session's live Q&A.

BPA is a building block in making PC but it is also a degradation product.