CHICAGO (July 17, 1:10 p.m. EDT) — Hosokawa Alpine American introduced its Procon control system for blown film at NPE 2000 in Chicago.
The Natick, Mass., firm claims Procon provides full-time process monitoring and trending, downtime cause and effect, lay-flat measurement and control, and calibration cage measurement and control. It provides complete process management with a WIN 16 human-machine interface.
Alpine used the Procon system on a high-output metallocene linear low density polyethylene, low-stalk blown film line running at NPE. The line also featured the firm´s new SideFlow blown film die. The 40-63 K die is side-fed with dual vertical spirals and has output of as much as 1,500 pounds per hour.
Alpine also debuted its CaliperControl series of segmented air rings. The company said the computer-controlled ring reduces gauge variation by more than 50 percent, to plus or minus 4 percent. CaliperControl was on the film line running 1-mil film. The line included a 120-millimeter grooved-feed extruder, debuted for the first time in North America.