To estimate the value of a used extrusion line, invoke the rule of thirds: Offer the seller one-third of the cost of a new line similar to the used one and set aside another third to fix what’s broken and for shipment expenses. The final third is your reward for buying used.
What did I learn at ANTEC last week in Anaheim, CA? That nano-materials should not be relegated just to special-use cases, that India has huge potential for plastics technology and much more.
More than 120 papers related to extrusion will be presented at the Society of Plastics Engineers’ Annual Technical Conference (ANTEC) in Anaheim, CA, next month. Here is a handy guide to the program.
Our machines may have a lot of information on them, or none at all. Get it into your hard drives while you can, before it disappears or you can’t read it reliably any more. This is what you may find.
When monitoring the vital signs of the extrusion process—melt temperature, melt pressure and motor load—it’s critical to know where you are measuring, what to expect and what may throw off the results.
In the extrusion process, melt temperature is the most important controller of gloss. The hotter, the better, but beware discoloration and brittleness that may appear if the surface gets too hot.
You’ve finished your run and you want to use the line with another resin. Do you: Follow with the other resin right away? Take the system apart and clean it all? Or just clean the die or the screw? Or do you run a purge material through to make the change easier/quicker/cheaper? There is no simple...
The Vinyl Plastics division of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE; Bethel, CT) organizes an annual conference that features technical talks, especially on PVC markets, new additives and regulations that affect users of PVC and its relatives. More than 150 people, mostly processors and additive...
