American Kuhne (York, PA) will showcase a new modular extrusion system at the co-located MD&M East and PLASTEC East shows at booth 1539 that enables processors of tubing and other small-diameter medical products to be up and running with a new job just three minutes after the previous run. Based on the company's Single-Minute Exchange of Die concept, the quick-change system allows die and barrel clean out to take place outside the cleanroom environment. 

The system has four components: An extruder drive module for the cleanroom; a purge module for the tool room or other maintenance area; and two barrel modules, one of which is used on-line while the alternate is purged and cleaned. At the end of a job, the dirty barrel module, including die head, is rolled away to the tool room for clean out—a procedure that typically takes two hours. The alternate barrel module, preheated and with the new job recipe pre-loaded, can be installed on-line in about three minutes.

MD&M East and PLASTEC East return to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City from June 8 to 11, 2015.

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