Senior reporter Bill Bregar gathered these new briefs at K 2004, held Oct. 20-27 in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Kortec plans to open new European base
Kortec Inc., an Ipswich, Mass.-based supplier of PET preform coinjection systems, is expanding its European operations with a new headquarters for Kortec Europe Ltd.
Currently, Kortec Europe is in Antwerp, Belgium, but the company plans to open a new office this year in either northern Belgium or southern Holland.
Kortec also said it hired plastics packaging veteran Piet van den Houdt to the new position of business development manager for Europe. Most recently he worked in project management and business development for Paris-based Pechiney Group.
New W&H extruders feature direct drives
Windmöller & Hölscher AG has used direct-drive technology on its printing presses, but now the company brings direct drive to its Varex extruders for blown film lines.
W&H showed five direct-drive extruders at K 2004, where the blown film line made five-layer film. The big line used the patented Maxicone die, which W&H said is ideal for producing wide barrier films and multilayer polyolefin films. The five-layer line also was equipped with the Multicool D double-deck air ring for bubble cooling.
Lengerich, Germany-based W&H's U.S. headquarters is Windmoeller & Hoelscher Corp. in Lincoln, R.I.
Reifenhäuser shows three-layer film line
Reifenhäuser GmbH demonstrated a three-layer blown film line to run laminating films and other high-quality films, called Filmtec 3-1700 IBC.
The K show line had three Reitorque extruders with gearless drives and high-torque output. The gearless extruders can be installed horizontally or vertically, saving space. Reinfenhäuser said the Reitorque extruder also is being used by pipe makers.
The company also ran a seven-layer cast film line with four of the extruders at its headquarters factory in nearby Troisdorf, Germany. The line featured a new Feicofeed coextrusion block using segmented adjustment to control and vary all melt layers that flow together into the feed block, not just the outer layers.
The line had a new, seven-layer die head for blown film, called HDS, for horizontal distribution system, with rheologically optimized melt channels. The die has a range of barrier film structures, with short changeover times.
Reifenhäuser's U.S. headquarters, Reifenhauser Inc., is in Ipswich, Mass.
ETA extruder boasts screw within screw
ETA Kunststofftechnologie GmbH, which makes extruders, customized extrusion dies and barrier screws, introduced a new extruder 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.
According to Michels, 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.
Briefly ...
* Kiefel Extrusion GmbH of Worms, Germany, sold eight blown film lines at the show, including a three-layer line to Raven Industries Inc., based in Sioux Falls, S.D.