Film extrusion: EDI installs 1.6m cast film line in application labFilm extrusion: EDI installs 1.6m cast film line in application lab

Extrusion Dies Industries LLC (EDI; Chippewa Falls, WI) has installed a 1.6m (63-inch) extrusion line at its process lab, allowing for its own and customer research into new cast films, coatings, or laminations. The line is capable of laboratory-scale single- or multilayer production, as well as web converting, with five extruders that can produce single- or multilayer cast films at thicknesses from 8 to 125 µm (0.3 to 5 mils). EDI declined to reveal the make of the line or total investment cost. The lab itself covers 13,000 ft² and has four full-time employees.

Extrusion Dies Industries (EDI) LLC's new 1.6 m cast-film extrusion line

Speeds for an 8-µm linear low or low-density polyethylene film average 229m (750 ft) per minute. Multilayer film can range from standard coextrusions to wholly new structures enabled by EDI's layer-multiplier tooling. That technology can split a melt stream into a few dozen or more than 1000 microlayers.

The process lab also includes a slot die or fluid-coating line and a sheet line with six extruders, among other product/process development capabilities. The lab is equipped with two unwind stations for converting film made on the new cast film line, as well as from externally produced rollstock.
 
Dennis S. Paradise, EDI's VP of sales and marketing, noted that EDI's lab allows product development under complete confidentiality without impacting a processors own production capacity. "With outside trial-run facilities increasingly scarce, processors and converters are forced to use their own full-scale production lines at the cost of lost output and high levels of material waste," Paradise said.

EDI's board announced on Dec. 22, 2010 that the company would be sold to private equity firm Bertram Capital, with Paradise, and other key executives, including John Ulcej, Gary Oliver, Gregory Raleigh, and Daniel Kelm, to be retained.