The system is especially designed for PTI’s strategy of expanding into areas such as Russia, Eastern Europe, South America, China and India where an extrusion line needs to handle a variety of jobs.

“Rigid packaging, particularly for food and medical applications, is a growing market in those countries, said John Chalmers, PTI vice president of sales and marketing, in a news release.

“We appreciate that in developing markets customers aren’t able to dedicate their production to one particular product. Globaline will allow them to run multiple products efficiently on one machine.”

“It’s a brand new machine,” Chalmers elaborated in a telephone interview. “We’ve built a robust machine.”

Globaline comprises standard, pre-engineered components with common-sense features, according to PTI President Dana Hanson. It includes a central touch screen, tight tolerances and a high level of automation. It is priced much lower than custom-designed machines leading to cost efficiency, Hanson said in an interview. Quick style plugs and machine levelers permit mechanical system installation in a matter of days.

Hanson said Globaline has been engineered to cut delivery times and costs, with lead times trimmed by 30 percent to 40 percent.

Globaline incorporates a patent-pending linear-bearing-mounted frame infrastructure and a universal patent-pending anti-stat coating system for top, bottom and two-side coating applications. Basic machine widths are 1 meter and 1.5 meters with outputs of 650 to 3,900 pounds (295 to 1,770 kilograms) per hour configured to customer needs. Monolayer and coextrusion versions are available, said the Aurora, Illinois, firm.

“We looked at the whole process that makes sheet rather than change the features of one element,” Hanson said in a pre-NPE interview.

The Globaline displayed at PTI’s booth is a compact unit for inline thermoforming. It can process 1,100 to 1,600 pounds (500 and 726 kilograms) per hour of PET, high impact polystyrene or polypropylene.

The NPE system includes a 4.5-inch (11-centimeter), 32:1 extruder, Maag gear pump system, 46-inch-wide (117-centimeter-wide) sheet die and support, a three-roll take-off, 300 horsepower AC Vector extruder motor and drive and hydraulic dual bolt screen changer.