The following briefs were compiled at K'95, held Oct. 5-12 in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Wilmington Machinery earlier this year quietly shipped to an undisclosed U.S. customer its first rotary blow molding machine featuring a dual-parison clamp in a stack configuration.
This type of clamp is said to require only the same amount of force as a single-cavity machine.
The unit, worth about $2.5 million, is capable of operating in a dual-cavity, dual-parison configuration, with dual in-mold labeling, according to Russ LaBelle, president of the Wilmington, N.C., machine maker. The 18-station machine, with four 8-ounce bottles in every clamp, can yield about 20,000 pieces per hour, LaBelle said at K'95.
Additionally, he said the firm now is working on a dual-parison, six-layer rotary blow molding machine, fed by four coextrusion units, that will offer throughput of some 2,000 pounds per hour. That will yield 60 million units a year of single-service-sized beverage containers, LaBelle estimated.
Wilmington expects to produce this machine in the second quarter next year, and have it commercially available in the third quarter.
BASF AG offering new PP catalyst
BASF AG of Ludwigshafen, Germany, has developed a patented catalyst based on metallocene technologies that can be used as a drop-in replacement for conventional catalyst systems in making polypropylene.
BASF said the catalyst is designed for use with the gas-phase polypropylene production process it developed and is licensing, and that the catalyst itself will be licensed.
BASF provided no details other than to say the system is based on a metal different from other metallocene systems.
Goodrich introduces three TPUs, alloys
BFGoodrich Specialty Chemi-cals of Cleveland introduced three thermoplastic polyurethanes and TPU alloys at K'95.
The company introduced two grades of TPU elastomers that the company claims have abrasion, cut and tear resistance and elasticity similar to natural rubber that can be extruded into a variety of shapes. The rubberlike grades are being sold under the trade names Estane 58661 and Estane 58238.
Michael Marasch, senior marketing manager for Estane products, said they are being targeted at belting, hoses, tubes and medical applications.
BFG also introduced a TPU grade for films that has high moisture-barrier and vapor-transmission characteristics.
