DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY (Jan. 5, 1:50 p.m. EST) — ETA Kunststofftechnologie GmbH, which makes extruders, customized extrusion dies and barrier screws, introduced a new extruder at K 2004 boasting a screw within a screw.
Robert Michels, project manager, said the idea behind the Co-Ax machine dates to the 1970s, “but nobody has built it so far.”
The inner screw is used to meter throughput and mixing and melting capacity. Michels said the innovation uses four small motors instead of one large one to run several drives that power the inner screw, plus the drive for the outer screw.
ETA of Troisdorf, Germany, also has developed a novel coextrusion die in cooperation with the Institute for Product Engineering at Duisburg-Essen University.