Extrusion Dies Industries LLC supplied the 10-foot-wide flat sheet die for Rowmark LLC's big new sheet line, nicknamed The Beast.
Rowmark dedicated the sheet line at its Findlay, Ohio, headquarters in mid-July.
EDI custom-built the triple-manifold Ultraflex die for Rowmark. The die, which weighs 14,200 pounds, is designed to produce one- to three-layer sheet, from 0.1 inch to 0.375 inches thick.
Erie Hausermann, Rowmark's vice president of manufacturing and technology, said the ability to make three-layer sheet allows Rowmark to combine materials, for example, using a resin that delivers strength with others that provide properties such as surface aesthetics, color and ultraviolet-light resistance.
EDI of Chippewa Falls, Wis., equipped the die with its FastGap system, for single-point adjustment of the lip gap. FastGap allows users to adjust the position of the movable lower lip of the die, varying sheet thickness within a range of 0.25 inch without taking the die off-line, plus an additional 0.1-inch with the flexible top lip, which controls the traverse-gauge profile. Combined, that provides a range of gap adjustment of as much as 0.3 inch.
“Since the gauge uniformity of each layer is critical to us, EDI designed the die with three manifolds so that each layer can be fine-tuned before the layers are combined, and so that we have maximum versatility for varying the thickness of each layer,” the company said.
Tel. 715-726-1201, fax 715-726-2205, email [email protected].
