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July 1, 2003

3 Min Read
Pipe Options Proliferate In Slate Of Summer Exhibitions

European manufacturers have brought plenty of new pipe extrusion equipment onto the market in the last months, much of it first shown at the Plast exhibition in May or at subsequent open house events. More pipe extrusion developments geared towards North American processors appeared at last month’s NPE, and these will be highlighted in the next issue.

Though growth is less than 3 percent/yr, the Western Europe plastic pipe market is huge, with about 2.5 million tonnes of material consumed there last year, according to the the European Plastic Pipe Market 2003 report from IAL Consultants (London). Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) remains the preferred material with about 1.3 million tonnes consumed, but polyethylene (PE) continues to gain market share and now accounts for 36 percent of all plastic pipe.

Many of the recent machine developments reflect the growing demand for PE pipe. Cincinnati Extrusion (Vienna) has introduced a lower-cost alternative to conventional drip irrigation pipe technology. Traditionally injection molded drippers are inserted into just-extruded pipe lengths through the rear of a horizontal die head at preset intervals. The Cincinnati concept replaces the drippers with an embossed PE tape with baffles to regulate water flow, which provides pressure control and allows precise water metering (see photo, below).

The PE tape is extruded on an Alpha 45 single-screw extruder equipped with a special die, then embossed directly by a downstream unit, ready for insertion into the horizontal die head of a second extruder. The 20-mm diameter PE pipe, with a wall thickness of .15 to .2 mm, is produced on a Proton 60 single-screw extruder with 100 m/min output. The tape is directly welded onto the inner pipe wall in the calibration unit, which is followed by a cooling bath. Drip holes in the pipe are then cut at defined locations using lasers. Cincinnati is working with Drip Research Technology System (DRTS; San Diego, CA) on this project, says Hans Berlisg, managing director at Cincinnati Extrusion. The company sees high drip pipe demand in southern Europe, the Middle East, and China, he reports.

The firm is also testing its new IRIS and PHPO monolayer and coextrusion feedblocks. The first commercial unit, an IRIS 16 monolayer, will be marketed this month while the others will be introduced later this year. Earlier this year Cincinnati also began making and marketing its own vacuum bath tanks, spray cooling tanks, and caterpillar hauloffs. On profile lines the firm cooperates with Austrian manufacturers Greiner and Technoplast on downstream equipment, but it had no such arrangement for pipe lines.

For polyethylene pipes, Amut (Novara, Italy) has changed the design of the grooved feed zone and the screw geometry on its EA 60 HP single-screw extruders so that material is more quickly conveyed and lower melt temperatures can be used. Temperature controls have also been improved to allow processors to more closely regulate melt temperature. Five models are available, all with L/D ratios of 33:1; output ranges from 350 to more than 1200 kg/hr. The manufacturer has also designed a multiple coextrusion die head with spiral distributors targeted at processing five-layer PE pipe. During the Plast exhibition in May, rival Italian manufacturer Bausano (Rivarolo) highlighted its remote diagnostics capability, displaying one of its MD-90 twin-screw machines for pipe and profile with a camera mounted on it to facilitate remote audio and video contact between the machine operator and Bausano technicians.

Early this month, Krauss-Maffei (Munich) is holding an open house at which it will exhibit its QuickSwitch system for changing pipe sizing without stopping production (for more, see May 2003 MP/MPI, p. 49). Early this year the firm acquired the fiber-reinforced pipe technology of Kuhne (Saint Augustin, Germany) a move Albert Brunner, extruder sales manager, says is already proving positive for the firm.

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