New extrusion dies are flowing out of Guill Tool & Engineering Co. Inc. like tubing out of an extruder.
At NPE 2003, the company in West Warwick, R.I., introduced:
* Series 900 in-line tubing dies, which boast custom tooling at off-the-shelf prices. The dies can extrude hose or pipe ranging from 0.005 inch to 8 inches in diameter, in one to five layers, for markets such as food service, automotive, industrial, telecommunications and medical. Spiderless in-line heads result in no spider lines and allow more room for air, which eliminates cold legs that can inhibit product output. Highlights are a patent-pending FeatherTouch adjustment in the die holder and a cartridge-style ball assembly that does not require the loosening of retaining screws to make adjustments, Guill claims.
* Series 400 corrugated extrusion tooling improves crush resistance and enhances product durability. Features of the patent-pending line include a multiport spiral flow design that balances material distribution to eliminate weld lines, increasing the strength of the hose or pipe.
* Rotary/oscillating crossheads that can eliminate ovality and weld lines, and improve the ability to cross-link various materials. The crossheads are stainless steel. The rotary die extrudes a polymer chain aligned in a radial manner vs. the traditional longitudinal direction, so the extruded shape is about 30 percent stronger yet uses less resin than standard extrusion, said Bill Conley, sales manager.
* The Multiflow valve, which allows extruders to make three-layer, four-layer or five-layer tubing, while using fewer extruders. In the three-layer configuration, melt is fed from an extruder and divided inside the manifold, to form both the inner and outer layers of the final product.
* Low-volume medical extrusion tooling designed for accurate, multilayer, thin-wall extrusion of medical fluoropolymers.
* The Syncroflow design that extrudes rubber and plastics simultaneously, in the same tooling. The tooling has a barrier that insulates and separates the extruded materials from each other.
* A line of crosshead and in-line dies called FlexSpiral, that improves roundness of the product, reducing material usage. FlexSpiral can extrude one to five layers and has multifeed port locations.
* Equaflow tooling, designed for products that marry plastic and wood such as thin strips or trim-type molding, or coextruded products such as a wood-fiber core covered by a vinyl skin.
Guill Tool also redesigned its 700 Series, an adjustable center crosshead die that holds close-tolerance walls for specialized applications such as electronic, medical tubing and wire and cable.
Tel. (401) 828-7600, fax (401) 823-5310, e-mail [email protected]