Product Watch: Brückner, Extruder Experts and BrabenderProduct Watch: Brückner, Extruder Experts and Brabender

First stop is Gurgaon, India, home to plastics processor SRF, an Indian company manufacturing technical textiles, chemicals, engineering plastics and packaging films, notably BOPET. The multi-faceted company has teamed up with film tenter developer Brückner (Siegsdorf, Germany) for development of a line to help SRF's entry into the BOPP film market.

The new 8.7m wide line will be located at SRF's facility in Durban, South Africa. SRF has a global workforce of around 5500 and operations in four countries: India, the UAE, Thailand and South Africa. Within the packaging films industry SRF has become the second largest thin PET film processor in India, with a current total capacity of 60,000 tonnes/yr.

New from Extruder Experts (Monschau, Germany) is a co-rotating, twin-screw, lab-scale extruder as component kit. The XTR20 has a 20mm screw and an L/D of 40. It comes with six heating zones, and the top of the extruder flips open over the entire length of the processing unit. It comes standard with a 5,5 kW motor. Throughput is up to 10kg/hr.

In South Hackensack, NJ, C.W. Brabender Instruments Inc. has introduced its laboratory electrically heated prep-mill.

The machine is designed for small-scale milling of elastomeric and thermoplastic materials.  The electrically heated mill is designed to operate at temperatures up to 260°C, with an accuracy of ± 1°C.
 
The Prep-Mill drive is designed to provide high torque output from a 2.5 HP sensor-less vector drive with built-in torque overload protection. Monitored by a digital DC amp meter with torque overload indicator, variable roll speed is 0-30 RPM. There are dial gauges installed over the rolls to accurately determine the roll gap setting.
 
In addition to the operator trip bar over the mill rolls, two operator 'kick plates' will also stop the drive when actuated. The 'kick plates' are permanently mounted on both sides of the mill. There is also an 'emergency stop' on top of the unit. The entire drive is mounted on a heavy gauge mobile cart. The cart includes a cabinet for storage of tools and accessories.
 
Brabender manufactures instrumentation for rheology, processing development, laboratory scale compounding, extrusion and mixing applications.