Modern Plastics Worldwide - March 2010 - dae uptlax

A Canon Communications LLC Publication 

March 2010 

THE GLOBAL PLASTICS MAGAZINE 

Extrusion extravaganza 

Your questions, answered 

Peer review 

Sustainable and profi table? 

In Wisconsin? Let’s try 

Chinaplas preview 

Country’s opportunities are 

still plentiful 

Published Continuously Since 1925 

plasticstoday.com/mpw 

Plastics’ prospects 

in solar brighter 

than ever

Open-Hearted 

Power! 

“Rapid goes big with new 600-Series” 

After the success with the Open-Hearted 300-, 

400-, and 500-Series, Rapid has now introduced 

the biggest Open-Hearted granulator ever, the 

600-Series, filled with new technologies. 

The Open-Hearted concept means an ergonomic 

design that enables to open the cutter 

house completely, getting total access to the 

heart of the machine facilitating cleaning, maintenance 

and inspection. 

Within a couple of steps, fast and easy access 

is gained to the cutter house and associated 

components, including its fixed and rotating 

knives, for cleaning, servicing or knife-changing. 

Clear visual access to the core machine parts 

allows “visibly clean” inspection and approval of 

the machine before it resumes operation, preventing 

potential contamination at colour and 

material. 

The Rapid 600-series comes in three widths, 

900 mm, 1.200 mm and 1.500 mm. 

19-22 April, 2010 in Shanghai, 

Visit us on Chinaplas, Hall E3 Booth E3F41 

Rapid Granulator AB 

Phone: +46 (0)370 86500 

www.rapidgranulator.com 

E-mail: info@rapidgranulator.se


ON THE COVER 

28 Sun Power 

A bright future 

Everyone knows some processors 

are using alternative energy to cut 

their electric bills. But who’s making 

all of the plastic parts in those 

solar cells? 

44 


15 

COLUMNS 

MARCH 2010 

CONTENTS 

8 Modern Executive 

An “Xten-sive” look at life as an American molder: 

Chapter 1 

In this first in a year-long series, a Wisconsin molder opens its doors to share 

with us what is and isn’t working in its efforts to implement sustainable and 

profitable processing. 

PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY 

14 Processing Trends 

Injection molding: Molded parts get PUR coating in a single mold 

Profile extrusion: Debuting at IBS, a WPC but without the wood 

RIM: Process encapsulates electronics, forms housings in a single step 

LSR: With new silicone, no need for rubber gaskets 

18 Material Thoughts 

The latest materials developments in bioplastics, additives, resins, and more. 

22 Product Watch 

New technology and business developments around the world 

FEATURE 

32 Extrusion Extravaganza 

Extrusion processors’ problems meet their match 

Engineering consultant Allan Griff starts his series designed to help extrusion 

processors operate their facilities at top tempo. 

WORLD TOUR 

42 Chinaplas preview: The way forward for the world’s 

second-largest economy 

44 Twin-sheet thermoformed TPU deployed to Iraq and 

and Afghanistan 

SPOTLIGHT 

50 Medical maven 

Ron Wortley of Medron Inc. doesn’t take on work unless he can 

make money at it. 

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE 

4 Contact MPW 

4 Web exclusives 

5 Letter from the editor 

6 First Look: News & Analysis 

46 Countdown to K 

47 Classifieds 

49 Calendar of events 

49 Advertiser index 

VOL. 87 NO. 2 

MODERN PLASTICS WORLDWIDE • MARCH 2010 3

M P W 

web exclusive 

Online now at 


An evolution in flight: 

Q&A with Ed Mack 

Tri-Mack Plastics Mfg. Corp. is the 

epitome of the new breed of plastics 

processor that is “more than just 

a molder.” Ed Mack, president, 

discusses his company’s specialized 

niche producing high-performance 

components and assemblies for 

critical applications with Clare 

Goldsberry. 

Additive manufacturing gets standardized 

Is it rapid prototyping? Rapid manufacturing? Additive 

manufacturing? The technology is global and developing rapidly, 

but the standards and terminology are dated and inconsistent. 

That’s starting to change. 

Nano-scale particles continue to fascinate 

Many plastics processors are as yet unfamiliar with nanoparticlesized 

additives and fillers, but expect greater awareness of them 

as suppliers rapidly ramp up capacity for these and OEMs clamor 

for nanoparticles’ effects. 

Obstacle in the interview jungle? Not necessarily, 

but prep for webcam interview 

Landing a good job has never been easy, and job seekers need to 

be prepared for every eventuality. One relatively new challenge in 

the job search jungle is an interview conducted via a camera—a 

webcam—that sends images and voice streaming through the 

Internet. 

Thanks to our plasticstoday.com sponsors: 

Sr. Group Publisher 

Patrick Lundy; +1 973-808-0494 

patrick.lundy@cancom.com 

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4 MARCH 2010 • MODERN PLASTICS WORLDWIDE plasticstoday.com/mpw

EDITORIAL 

Kid stuff; energetic 

opportunity; thanks, 

Wisconsin; extrusion 

extravaganza 

What, still here? Didn’t listen to me? 

Well, since you decided to stay, I’ll 

share some good news about kids’ views 

on plastics, and whet your appetite for 

a few of the articles inside this issue of 

your magazine. Like you in your company, 

I’m tremendously proud of what 

we produce, and thought we hit quite 

a high note last month with our special 

Focus on Medical Innovation issue, but 

this month’s articles are right up there. 

Good news on the emerging generation 

front: In late January I spent a 

morning helping at my local elementary 

school, where a group of fourth-graders 

spent two days working their way 

through Kuno’s Cool Plastics Box, an 

interactive educational program developed 

and funded by PlasticsEurope, a 

trade group representing plastics suppliers. 

The boxes, which elementary schools 

can order, are intended to help create 

interest among school-age boys and girls 

in chemistry and plastics. The kids learn 

the definitions of “hydrophilic” and 

“hydrophobic” as well as the names of 

common plastics, bury a biodegradable 

film to see what happens, and a good bit 

more. It’s a busy two days, which is why 

the school welcomes parents’ help. 

I quizzed the kids, “What do you think 

of when you hear the word ‘plastics’?” 

Ask a group of adults and many, maybe 

most, raise issues such as trash, landfills, 

“dangers lurking in plastics,” and the lot. 

Someone will mention Mr. Robinson. I 

was pretty sure the kids would not have 

heard of bisphenol A or phthalates, and 

would have hit the floor if any of them 

mentioned Anne Bancroft, but I was 

dead certain they would mention trash. 

(Full disclosure: I was genuinely looking 

forward to playing schoolmarm. “People 

cause litter, not materials.”) 


A word of advice: skip this editorial 

and jump straight to the outstanding 

articles featured in this issue. 

But no chance: The kids mentioned 

Lego, Playmobil, toys in general, even 

packaging—things made of plastic they 

encounter daily. Almost spoiling for a 

fight, I prompted, “What about litter?” 

but they weren’t taking the bait. None 

associated plastics directly with litter; all 

cited only positive impressions. Sure, there 

is always more the industry can do on the 

PR front, but these smart young people 

recognize a good thing when they see it. 

• • • 

The amount of solar energy that falls 

on the planet in one hour is enough to 

generate sufficient power for every person 

on earth for one year. It’s an attention-getting 

fact. There remain complex 

issues that need to be resolved before the 

rays hitting the ground provide the power 

flowing out of your sockets, but there is 

no denying the huge potential the solar 

power industry holds. Plastics processors 

will play a major part in how quickly, 

and how successfully, solar power takes 

a greater role in our lives. Tony Deligio’s 

article on p. 28 offers a good look at an 

industry about to shift into very high 

gear, especially in North America. 

• • • 

Our thanks go out to Xten Industries 

in Kenosha, WI. The people there have 

been kind enough to work with our own 

Clare Goldsberry for a series of articles 

through 2010 highlighting what Xten, a 

custom injection molder, is doing well, 

and even not so well, as it fights its way 

through a pretty tough economy. Call it 

“Best practices shared on the fly.” Clare’s 

opening look at Xten starts on p. 8 and 

her updates out of Kenosha will appear 

quarterly. 

• • • 

Extrusion extravaganza: Turn to p. 32 

to get a feel for the Q&A from the first 

webinar, in January, in our Extrusion 

Expert series. No matter your game— 

profile, pipe, film, sheet, or foam—extrusion 

expert Allan Griff fielded your questions 

and offered rich in-depth advice. 

The first two webinars in this series are 

available for viewing and listening at 

plasticstoday.com. In April the Extrusion 

Expert series continues; register for free 

at the website. 

Kid stuff, sun, “Thanks, WI,” Extrusion 

Expert . . . that’s it. Told you to skip 

to the articles. Have a great month, enjoy 

the issue, and as always, please keep us 

posted on topics you would like to see 

covered. 

Matt Defosse, 

Editor-in-Chief 


FIRST LOOK 

Daily news and features at plasticstoday.com/mpw 

In Brief 

The search goes on: 

India vs. China 

The chase for bankrupt plastics supply 

major LyondellBasell continues. Indian 

conglomerate Reliance has a bid in, as 

previously reported, and at press time 

financial news sources were naming China’s 

Sinopec as another possible suitor. 

NGF adds fi fth Varex 

from W&H 

Next Generation 

Films (Lexington, 

OH) has acquired 

two blown film lines 

in the past nine 

months, including 

its recent purchase 

of a Varex coextru- 

sion system, its 

fifth, from Windmöller 

& Hölscher. 

Next Generation’s 

new three-layer line 

Honeywell signs on 

CFP as European fi lm 

distributor 

Honeywell signed CFP Flexible Packaging 

(Cesano Maderno, Italy) as its primary 

distributor in Europe, the Middle East, and 

Africa for its Capran-brand nylon films, 

which are extruded at Honeywell’s Pottsville, 

PA plant. 

What you had to say 

Earnings season gives way to 

an M&A spring 

Last year’s earnings 

reports are in, so it’s a 

good time to see how 

companies met the Great 

Recession challenge. For 

some, the news wasn’t 

that bad. Flexible packaging 

processor Bemis 

Co. (Neenah, WI) posted 

solid earnings for 2009, 

toward the top end of its 

management’s forecast, 

even though net sales 

dropped 7% compared to 2008. Excluding 

acquisition-related charges and 

financing expenses, severance charges, 

and a gain on the sale of an asset, diluted 

earnings per share at Bemis would have 

been $1.86 in 2009, besting the $1.61 

per share earned in 2008. At press time, 

Bemis was still working on its acquisition, 

announced last summer, of Alcan 

Packaging’s Food Americas division. 

Extrusion blowmolder Graham Packaging 

Co. (York, PA) and its owner, 

private equity firm Blackstone Group 

LP, moved forward with plans to take 

the company public, with the initial 

public offering (IPO) priced at $10/ 

share, lower than Blackstone had hoped. 

At press time, the shares were above the 

IPO level. Graham’s net sales were down 

14% Q1-Q3 2009, compared to the same 

period in 2008, but its net income for 

“For unfilled resins and fairly new machines, once a year (for 

automotive, during the December shutdowns) is fine. If you 

guys are monitoring your injection process, then you should 

see that it’s time to check them if your machine readouts, 

scrap, and efficiency are out of control.” 

Reader response to a forum question, “How often should we measure our screws and 

barrels?” Get involved in the conversation at plasticstoday.com. 

Graham Packaging’s IPO finally took 

place. (Shown: CEO Mark Burgess.) 

that time frame jumped 

about 70%. 

Meanwhile, the rumor 

mill churned out a leak 

that one of Bemis’s top 

competitors, Nordenia 

(Greven, Germany), may 

be for sale. A report from 

Reuters cited unidentified 

sources as indicating that 

Oaktree Capital Management 

(Los Angeles, CA) 

wants to sell the German 

flexible films processor for some €600 

million ($844 million). Both strategic 

and equity/buyout firms were said to be 

interested in Nordenia, said Reuters. 

As M&A advisor Thomas Blaige 

noted in our January issue’s As I See 

It interview, the recession didn’t slow 

M&As last year, and he expects strategic 

deals to continue apace and financial 

ones to increase in number in 2010. So 

far, he seems to be quite prescient. Pretium 

Packaging LLC and Novapak Corp. 

recently announced their merger, creating 

a $240 million business of blowmolded 

bottle and injection molded preform 

sales. Pretium, a custom blowmolder, is 

partnering with New York-based buyout 

firm Castle Harlan Inc. on the deal to 

merge with PVC Container’s Novapak 

business. The combined business retains 

the Pretium Packaging name. 

Polling news 

The books are closed on 2009. 

How did your business fare? 

Business activity increased. 

Business activity decreased. 

Business activity stayed the same. 

70% 

6 MARCH 2010 • MODERN PLASTICS WORLDWIDE plasticstoday.com/mpw 

60% 

50% 

40% 

30% 

20% 

10% 

0% 

25% 

63% 

13%

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View from the field 

UK-based plastics recycler Axion 

Polymers provided this photo of old 

TVs it hopes to recycle, separating out 

the plastic for reuse, often for new TV 

housings. Closing the loop, sustainable, 

good, right? You’d think so, but there’s 

a new hitch. The European Parliament 

is debating what could become a ban 

on antimony trioxide (ATO), a flame 

retardant commonly added to E/E 

products. Such a ban would nip the 

budding E/E recycling programs, which 

began because of a different piece of 

legislation, the EU’s WEEE (Waste Electrical 

& Electronic Equipment) Directive, 

which was developed to—you guessed 

it—encourage recycling of old TVs and 

other E/E gear. 

ATO dust is unhealthy, but when the material is locked within a plastic product, it’s doing its 

good deed by keeping flame retardance high. 

Pricing summary: Monomer prices drive PE, PP up 

Brought to you by The Plastics Exchange 

Prices for plastics and most commodities 

climbed steadily between 2004 and 2007, 

and then dropped off a cliff as the recession 

hit. But now, with demand climbing 

and some prominent economies (China and 

India, for starters) rolling merrily along 

again, processors see little relief in their 

outlays for plastics. 

Monomer outages and runaway ethylene 

prices have been part of the problem recently 

for processors of polyethylene, noted 

Michael Greenberg, CEO of spot-trading 

platform The Plastics Exchange (TPE), in 

a recent posting for our daily e-newsletter, 

NewsFeed. In January alone, spot PE prices 

in the U.S. climbed $0.08/lb. Good news 

is that the monomer market is expected to 

ease considerably going forward. 

Polypropylene (PP) spot prices continued 

moving upward in January as well, and 

Resin prices got you down? 

Bill Bowie, COO of RTi 

(Resin Technology Inc.), 

offers free advice on resin 

purchasing strategies at 

plasticstoday.com. 

the rise had continued into February at press 

time. There were few fresh PP offers shown 

to the market, and the resin that was made 

available was quickly sold. 

By running reactors at an American 

Chemistry Council (ACC) estimated rate of 

just 71.4% in December, PP producers were 

able to liquidate nearly a quarter billion lb 

from their collective inventories, leaving just 

1.26 billion lb on hand at the end of last year. 

Greenberg said that was the lightest monthly 

inventory TPE has seen since it started 

keeping records. If you think low inventories 

bode well for a fall in PP prices, well, we’ve 

a bridge we’d like to sell you. 

Get spot plastics pricing information 

from TPE in every issue of our e-Weekly 

newsletter or even daily at plasticstoday. 

com/pricing, where we’ve also added futures 

pricing from the London Metal Exchange. 


Want more news? Find more 

every day by surfing to plastics 

today.com. We’ll save you the 

trip if you subscribe to News- 

Feed, our daily e-newsletter, at 

plasticstoday.com/newsletter. 

FIRST LOOK 

Names in the news 

New plant manager at injection molder 

Pereles Bros. Inc. (Milwaukee, WI) is 

Kent Kuecherer, who joined the firm 

in March 2007 in quality/continuous 

improvement. Kuecherer began his 

career in plastics in 1977 and has earned 

his pay at companies including Kaysun 

Corp., Dickten Masch, Gateway Plastics, 

and JW Speaker Corp. 

The ASTM International Committee 

D20 on Plastics has named R. James 

Galipeau, general manager at Intertek 

PTL (Pittsfield, MA), as chairman for a 

two-year term. ASTM Committee D20 

includes about 800 members responsible 

for close to 500 standards relating to 

plastics. Galipeau, a past president of 

the Society of Plastics Engineers, is also 

the U.S. delegate to the International 

Standards Organization (ISO) Technical 

Committee 61 on Plastics. 

Packaging processor InnoWare LLC 

(Menomenee Falls, WI) announced that 

its board chairman, Nicholas Clementi, 

has been named company CEO. Clementi 

takes over for Charles Woodward, 

who resigned as CEO and president. 

Milacron (Batavia, OH) recently 

announced that Gerold Schley is the new 

managing director of Ferromatik Milacron, 

its injection molding machinery 

manufacturing operation in Germany. 

Schley also continues to serve as VP for 

China and global sourcing at the company. 

He succeeds Guy Moilliet, who 

retired. 

[ On the record ] 

“We want to add a significant 

amount of new business via acquisitions 

in the next three to five years.” 

Neil Shillingford, CEO at profile, tube, and 

sheet extrusion processor Pexco. 

“If every Chinese mainlander drank 

one bottle of tea per day, demand for 

HDPE for the closures alone would 

amount to 1 million tonnes annually.” 

Narongchai Pisutpunya, senior manager, 

marketing department, PTT Polymer 

Marketing (Bangkok) 


MODERN EXECUTIVE 

O fficials 

An “Xten-sive” look at life as an 

American molder: Chapter 1 

By Clare Goldsberry Did the recession slow the pace of progress at your company? Likely it did, 

at Xten Industries, a custom 

injection molder and contract 

manufacturer in Kenosha, WI, believe 

that sustainability and profitability are 

not competing goals. They also are out 

to prove that profitable manufacturing 

and “Made in the U.S.A.” are not mutually 

exclusive terms. 

“Sustainability is about making 

responsible choices that help the environment 

and ensure that your company will 

survive the business pressures it faces,” 

says Mark Dirr, Xten’s director of engineering. 

“Ultimately, this is how you 

must approach your efforts to be a more 

sustainable operation—the two go hand 

in hand. When you find ways to responsibly 

use less of anything, you reduce 

your expenses, and that goes directly to 

your bottom line.” 

Xten Industries, formerly Hauser 

PlasTech, experienced strong growth 

over the past few years. During this 

recession the company saw some drop 

in business early on, but by September 

2009 things had picked up substantially. 

Because of this growth, explains Xten’s 

president Matthew Davidson, the company 

was reaching the limits of its elec- 

Quick facts: 

Xten Industries 

Where? Kenosha, WI 

How big? 78,000 ft 2 of manufacturing, 

office, and warehouse space 

Who’s there? 80 employees; Matthew 

Davidson, president 

What machines? 30 injection molding 

presses, 85-880 tons; all hydraulic 

except for a 400-ton electric 

but that does not mean you still aren’t striving to improve. In this, fi rst in a 

four-part series, MPW will be tracking one company’s efforts to be sustainable 

and profi table. 

Xten’s director of engineering, Mark Dirr, is helping the company pursue a number of 

different approaches to more sustainable, and more profitable, plastics processing. 

trical capacity. It was time to think about 

energy use and ways the company might 

save on electrical costs. 

Xten’s local utility, Wisconsin Energy 

(WE), offers a program in which it 

will evaluate a company’s current energy 

usage and estimated future needs. 

“Beyond saving money, we had the incentive 

of finding a solution to our upcoming 

capacity limits,” says Davidson. “Unless 

we became more efficient with the equipment 

we had, we’d have to invest heavily 

to expand our electrical capacity, which 

would cost us over $100,000. Our goal 

became cost avoidance and learning to 

live within our kilowatt means. The fact 

that we were helping to cut overall electrical 

consumption was an added benefit.” 

Xten began its sustainability effort 

with small steps—from the installation 

of energy-efficient lighting and motion 

sensors for turning lights on and off 

in offices or infrequently used warehouse 

bays, to employee training and 

working with the community. The com- 

pany also purchased an Ingersoll Rand 

Nirvana VSD rotary-screw air compressor 

and installed a variable-frequency 

drive (VFD) on its cooling tower system’s 

pump. These steps coincided with 

research on possible future projects such 

as reducing inline air pressure settings, 

heater bands, and potentially the purchase 

of an electric press. 

If at fi rst you don’t succeed . . . 

Not everything Xten tried worked out 

well. One of those missteps was the 

Power Factor Correction. The company 

installed a capacitor bank to reduce its 

peak power demand and improve its 

power factor, which is an evaluation of 

the unused power being returned to the 

electrical provider, measuring the number 

of degrees the current and voltage are 

out of phase with the power company. 

The better the alignment between these 

curves, the more efficiently the power 

plant can operate, explains Dirr. 

Sounds good, but the process failed 


to deliver the savings hoped for, because 

WE required that Xten own its transformer 

outright, which proved cost prohibitive 

(rules vary by energy company). 

Xten officials also hoped that the 

capacitor bank would help reduce the 

sharp peak demand spikes it experiences 

during the day and on Monday 

mornings at plant startup, but realistically, 

changing the timing and pattern 

of machine startups had a much more 

significant effect. 

“There was also a misconception 

about why we were going through this 

exercise, including converting our equipment 

from 240V to 480V,” comments 

Dirr. “Some people thought we were 

doing this to save energy, a common 

misconception. In fact, it was being done 

to reduce our amp draw so we could put 

off the expense of expanding our electrical 

distribution panel. Doubling the voltage 

halves the amp draw, but the power 

consumed remains the same. It doesn’t 

save money on your power bill.” 

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Helping hand from Focus on Energy 

The next step Xten took involved a 

statewide program, Focus on Energy, 

which helps businesses and residents of 

Wisconsin served by a participating utility 

to reduce their electrical consumption by 

offering incentives and technical expertise. 

“Focus came to us and stated they 

were interested in helping us buy an electric 

press,” Dirr says. “We started talking 

about that—a shovel-ready project that 

we could get funded immediately.” 

After going through the process 

to become qualified, Xten finally was 

denied the funding due to the relative 

cost of the electric machines, and the 

expected electrical savings vs. the many 

used hydraulic machines on the market. 

However, some benefits came out 

of Xten’s involvement with Focus on 

Energy. The research led the company to 

additional sustainable and money-saving 

efforts. In evaluating its energy consumption, 

Xten found that its older presses 

accounted for more than their share of 


the firm’s molding machines’ electrical 

usage. Focus did a baseline study for 

Xten, so the processor knew its average 

electrical consumption. In the midst of 

the economic crisis in 2009, Xten was 

running lean—too lean to handle this 

long-term project to reduce electrical use 

and improve sustainability with its current 

staffing levels. That’s when Focus on 

Energy offered a solution. 

Xten was presented with the opportunity 

to apply for a staffing grant based 

on the projects its management thought 

they could complete by a given deadline. 

They applied for a grant covering 

seven projects and ended up with an 

agreement to fund up to $31,415 of 

staffing costs to work on them. It was at 

this point, according to Dirr, that Xten 

fully committed to reducing its electrical 

consumption and increasing its sustainability 

efforts. 

Xten’s next steps were to complete 

the replacement of HID lamps throughout 

the plant with energy-efficient fluo- 

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rescent lighting. “Not only 

are the fluorescent lights more 

energy efficient, but they also 

have a better color rendering 

index and provide more 

even light over time than HID 

lamps,” Dirr comments. 

The installation of the 

lamps included motion sensors 

for infrequently accessed 

areas and ambient light detectors 

to take advantage of 

natural lighting during the 

day. Xten received a Focus 

on Energy grant of 34% of 

the project cost and projects it 

will save more than $14,000 

annually in electrical costs— 

paying off the project within 

nine months. The company 

financed the project through 

U.S. Energy Capital Corp., using a lowfee 

self-funding model that set the loan 

payments at a lower amount than the 

monthly cost savings. “The interest rates 

Lead quality tech Jorge Escobar explains the new heater bands 

to machine operators, demonstrating the cool-to-touch aspect. 

Xten retrofitted some of its largest presses with the bands to save 

power, reduce heat loss, and transmit heat more efficiently. 

were a little higher, but the self-funding 

option was very attractive to us,” 

Davidson added. 

The next project involved tackling the 

energy lost in its compressed 

air system. Focus offers a 

variety of incentives for fixing 

air leaks, including paying 

for an outside audit. Using 

an ultrasonic leak detector, 

Focus and Xten performed 

air leak audits on air lines 

and compressors, and fixed 

any leaks. Compressed air can 

be an expensive source of 

energy on the shop floor, and 

leaks can be a major cause of 

energy loss. 

Heater bands: Simple, 

low-cost, effective 

Additionally, Xten used grant 

money from Focus to retrofit 

several of its older large injection 

molding machines with 

ServTek self-insulating radiant heater 

bands, and will most likely continue retrofitting 

the other presses as well, since 

ServTek, Milacron’s aftermarket business 


unit, now offers a cost-efficient option 

for smaller presses, Dirr explains. 

“The radiant heater bands save power 

in two ways, by reducing heat loss 

with insulation and also by generating 

and transmitting heat more efficiently,” 

he adds. “Payback on the heater band 

systems comes out at about one year. 

However, while the heater bands hold 

the heat in—once they are on and running 

you can touch the outside with 

your hands and not get burned—the side 

effect of that is we might be forced to use 

our natural gas heat more to warm the 

plant in the winter months.” 

Dirr adds that the upside to that is 

that gas is cheaper to heat with than 

electricity used to produce the waste heat 

from the old heater bands, “So even in 

that case, the radiant heater bands are 

helping us save energy and money.” 

That’s often the case when deciding 

to go green: There is no one move or 

product that provides the total solution. 

Everything is a trade-off, with each 

We know how. 


having a positive or negative effect on 

the bottom line. “That’s where having 

a baseline evaluation on the facility’s 

energy usage helps,” notes Davidson. 

“Each step can be weighed and the pros 

and cons examined.” 

Xten has also installed CCS 

Technology’s SyncroSpeed variablefrequency 

drives on four of its largest 

presses. These drives automatically vary 

energy usage depending on the process 

cycle demand. “The motors used to be 

either just on or off,” Dirr says. “The 

variable-frequency drive is automatically, 

infinitely variable from 20%-100%, 

and provides just the energy needed to 

get the job done.” 

Some VFDs require technicians to 

adjust the motor parameters every time 

the process changes, but SyncroSpeed 

drive systems are programmed on installation 

to self-adjust and automatically 

optimize to the process. According to 

Dirr, these currently average 34% energy 

savings over the old motors. This project 


Thomas Tucker of Kinergetics LLC, 

contracted by Wisconsin’s Focus on 

Energy, is verifying that Xten Industries 

realizes the cost savings that the VFD 

manufacturers indicate for the drives. 

By checking the electrical readings 

on the power supply to the machines, 

the amount of energy savings is 

calculated. 

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was also supported by Focus 

on Energy with an incentive 

grant of $50/hp replaced, with 

an extra $10/hp bonus when 

Xten provides savings data. 

Right to the bottom line 

Xten is also working with 

CleanTech Partners, a funding 

partner of Focus on Energy, 

which has a financing system 

for new emerging technologies. 

Both the heater bands 

and variable drives fell into 

the scope of this program, 

and Xten received 5% interest 

financing, paid no money 

down, and pays back the loan 

through a 50/50 shared savings 

program on the heater bands and a 

30/70 split on the VFDs. 

“For every dollar we save on the 

heater bands, we keep $0.50 and pay 

them back $0.50,” explains Davidson. 

“That’s money directly to our bottom 

Don’t compromise 

on quality. 

For further information please contact: 

info@gabriel-chemie.com 

Shown here is the enclosure for the VFDs, linking the control 

panel to the press. Xten has installed four such drives on its 

largest machines. The VFDs automatically vary the energy 

usage depending on the process cycle demand. 

line. That is absolute genius. When you 

start looking at it, if the government 

wants us to keep manufacturing in the 

U.S., help small businesses, and reduce 

energy, what better way to do it than 

this? It allows us to turn a profit right 

www.gabriel-chemie.com Creativity 

away, but it’s not a gift. We’re 

paying them back. It’s a direct 

financing program to manufacturers 

who can promise to 

pay it back through the savings 

they’re realizing.” 

Xten production manager 

Rob Korpela adds, “We 

haven’t seen any negative 

change in performance of the 

presses using the radiant heater 

bands or the SyncroSpeed 

systems. The post-installation 

processing has been seamless.” 

Xten is also considering 

retrofitting its presses 

with Cincinnati Process 

Technologies’ (CPT) autobanking 

and auto-off controls. 

“Banking is reducing the level of something,” 

Dirr explains, “and Xten started 

this by addressing the human factor of 

a busy shop floor.” Ray Meldahl, who 

was hired by Xten using the staffing 

grant, began with a training program to 

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educate all production personnel on the 

benefits of turning off idle equipment, 

and how to make wise equipment shutdown 

decisions. 

“Newer presses often come equipped 

with the technology to auto-bank the 

heaters and shut down motors on an 

alarm, but these units offer some unique 

features,” notes Dirr. If a press is idle, 

the heat might be unintentionally left on 

at full process temperature, which wastes 

energy and degrades material. CPT’s 

equipment will signal that a press is idle 

and will automatically reduce the heat if 

an operator doesn’t respond to the signal, 

Dirr explains. If the heater bands reach 

the second time-out, they will re-signal 

and shut down completely if there is no 

operator response. Standard hydraulic 

motors typically only run intentionally 

on an idle press if the hydraulic oil needs 

to be warmed; once the oil reaches a 

pre-set temperature for a pre-set time, 

the control will pre-signal and then shut 

down the motors. 


Searching for funding 

Xten received a custom grant from Focus 

on Energy to help cover approximately 

25% of the project’s cost. Currently, 

it is seeking financing for the balance. 

“CleanTech Partners only funds emerging 

technologies, and did not feel that the autobanking/auto-off 

installations were new 

enough to be considered, so we are looking 

at alternate sources, including the State of 

Wisconsin and the American Recovery & 

Reinvestment Act funding,” says Dirr. 

Although previous efforts to purchase 

an electric press with the assistance of 

Focus failed, Xten was able to gain a new 

400-ton all-electric press on its own four 

months ago. “Knowing the total life cycle 

cost of a machine is important,” says 

Dirr. “You can’t just look at the upfront 

capital cost of the machine. You must 

also consider the expense of running the 

press over its lifetime. A hydraulic press 

will have higher ongoing expenses than 

an electric press, which can more than 

offset the higher capital cost of the elec- 


tric. We’re very curious to see how much 

we’ll save with the electric machine vs. 

the retrofitted hydraulic presses.” 

Xten is committed to making its 

sustainable efforts a reality that pays off 

on the bottom line and to prove it can 

be done. “We had a planning meeting 

and one of the outcomes was our goal 

to prove that manufacturing can thrive 

in the U.S.,” says Davidson. “Cutting 

our electrical consumption struck us 

as something we can do—it can save 

money for a company that uses a lot of 

electricity, as all injection molding companies 

do. These projects make sense for 

everyone since the cost per kW to reduce 

consumption is a fraction of the cost per 

kW to add electrical production capacity 

using any known technology.” MPW 

Search our website for “Xten” to download 

the most recent letter showing 

Kinergetics’ findings on the efficiency 

of three of Xten’s presses. 


PROCESSING 

TECHNOLOGY 

PROCESSING TRENDS 

INJECTION MOLDING 

Molded parts get PUR coating in a single 

mold; BMW likes it 

By Matt Defosse 

Multicomponent injection molding, in a single 

mold, with one of the materials a PUR coating that 

protects its thermoplastic substrate: That’s the beauty of a technology that 

was fi rst discussed fi ve years ago and now is claiming its initial commercial 

success, and in no less of a project than the new BMW 5 Gran Turismo. 

Sometimes a novel technology appears 

briefly but then quietly disappears. 

This time, one first highlighted at the K 

show in 2004 has evolved substantially 

and made its way into commercial production 

at fischer automotive systems 

GmbH, a German processor of plastic 

automotive systems. The new technology 

being employed, called DirectSkinning, 

grew out of the work first presented by 

plastics processing machinery manufacturer 

KraussMaffei at that event. The 

technology then was known as SkinForm 

and, while novel at the time, has been 

steadily developed so that it now meets 

commercial requirements for cost and 

efficiency. 

The first commercial DirectSkinning 

part, a decorative panel, seals off a 

kinematic drawer on the dashboard, and 

directly above the central console, of 

the BMW 5 Gran Turismo series. The 

approximately 1.4-mm-thick PUR covering 

for the panel is based on plastics 

supplier Bayer MaterialScience’s Bayflex 

LS (Light Stable) material. The panel is 

produced in five colors. 

In DirectSkinning, the “skin”—PUR 

coating—is applied using reaction injection 

molding (RIM) equipment directly 

to an injection molded part in the same 

mold in which the thermoplastic parts 

are formed (the process also has been 

developed for use in multiple molds). In 

With BMW as a first commercial customer for the process, fischer automotive 

scored quite a coup with the DirectSkinning process. 

Shown 

is a precommercial 

part: the cup holder 

is molded using DirectSkinning, 

with the visible part of the 

holder “skinned” with a PUR surface 

for protection and aesthetics. 

this case, the moldings fischer processes 

are from a polycarbonate/acrylonitrilebutadiene-styrene 

(PC/ABS) blend, Bayblend 

T85, also supplied by Bayer. 

After molding the thermoplastic substrate, 

the PUR system is injected into 

the closed mold via a mixing head, 

coating the substrate. “When a rotarytable 

or swivel-platen mold is used, the 

two production steps can be performed 

in parallel, for example, thus ensuring 

short cycle times and high productivity,” 

explains Andreas Bürkle, who is in 

charge of the DirectSkinning project at 

fischer automotive. 

The thickness and color of the PUR 

coating layer can be controlled. The 

investment and floor space required is 

less than if two machines—one each 

for injection and RIM—were required, 

and more significantly, the logistics are 

simplified since parts are ready to ship as 

they leave the processing cell. Also significant 

is that no paint lines are required. 

According to Bayer, the light stability 

of the decorative panel’s polyurethane 

surfaces has been tested via heat 

aging, hot-light aging, climatic change, 

and solar simulation testing, with that 

testing showing virtually no surface 

defects, discoloring, yellowing, or hardness 

fluctuations over the service life of 

the component. 


PROCESSING 

TECHNOLOGY 



PROFILE EXTRUSION 

Debuting at International Builders Show, a WPC but 

without the wood 

By Clare Goldsberry 

Walking the International Builders Show 2010 (Jan. 19-21) at the Las Vegas Convention Center revealed a lot about 

where the building and construction market is headed with respect to alternative building materials that meet today’s 

consumers’ demands for easy-installation, maintenance-free products. 

It also revealed that the growing body of experience with 

wood-plastic composites (WPCs) has not been entirely positive, 

and some processors hope to take advantage of the 

failings of established WPC profiles with their own new offerings, 

some of which dispense entirely with wood. 

One example, introduced at the show, is LifeTime Lumber, 

billed as a low-maintenance, eco-friendly, and fire-resistant 

wood-alternative decking, fencing, and dock material. It’s 

akin to a wood-plastic composite, just without the wood. 

LifeTime Lumber is made from inert material recovered from 

the electric power generation industry. It includes thermoset 

plastics combined in a patented mixture with fly ash, a nonhazardous 

inert material, extruded with a polyurethane outer 

layer. The resulting wood-alternative lumber does not figure in 

a termite’s menu, doesn’t allow for growth of mold or mildew, 

absorbs no water, and won’t significantly expand or contract. 

“This alternative doesn’t even have the problems that woodplastic 

composites have because there’s absolutely no wood in 

LifeTime Lumber,” says James Mahler Jr., president of LifeTime 

Lumber, headquartered in Carlsbad, CA. “Because of that, it 

doesn’t need fungicides, herbicides, or other ‘cides’ in the mixture.” 

The lumber is extruded at a facility in Brodhead, WI that 

makes polyurethane products for the automotive industry. 

Another wood-replacement product was introduced by 

Royal Outdoor Products with its new Novation decking, 

RIM 

Process 

encapsulates 

electronics, 

forms housings 

in a single step 

Thermoplastic injection molders of 

housings for E/E applications, as 

well as fi rms that use thermosets or 

ceramic to encapsulate the sensitive 

electronics within those housings, 

face an interesting new threat. 

The BaySystems polyurethane systems 

house in Otterup, Denmark, part of 

Bayer MaterialScience’s network of polyurethane 

systems houses, has worked 

with Swiss PUR processing machinery 

manufacturer Isotherm AG (Uetendorf) 

to develop what it says is a cost-effective 

reaction injection molding (RIM) process 

for the production of housings and 

the encapsulation/protection of sensitive 

electronic components in a single step. 

Typically production of these requires 

several separate steps: Housings are 

injection molded from thermoplastics, 

sensitive electronics are encapsulated in 

thermoset resin or ceramic, and then the 

which has the look of real wood planks. The company 

extrudes the planks from cellular PVC that stands up to chairs, 

spilled drinks, and harsh weather. Unlike composite decking 

that contains wood, Novation won’t absorb moisture. 

Deck the decks with rolls of plastics 

Plastics processors have taken many approaches to replacing 

wood in building and construction-related applications, but the 

IBS also revealed there are still more wood-replacement avenues 

to wander. For example, extrusion processor United Plastics 

Corp. of Mt. Airy, NC extended its range of brand-name products 

with the launch at IBS of ProFekt, a recyclable, realistic-wood 

extruded sheet designed to be used to cover old wooden deck 

and patio surfaces. ProFekt installs directly onto deck and patio 

surfaces to eliminate direct air and water contact with the surface 

and give old decks a new look without replacing the lumber. 

ProFekt is available in extruded rolls 21.5 inches wide by 12 

ft long and in 5.5-inch-wide-by-40-ft-long planks. ProFekt can be 

cut with a simple razor knife to the desired measurements, and 

then rolled over the old wooden surface using a vinyl adhesive 

and finishing nails at the top and bottom to hold it in place. 

“Installing ProFekt will double and even triple the life 

of decks and patios with minimal maintenance for years,” 

according to Jack Nagy Sr., VP of sales and marketing for 

United Plastics Corp. 

latter is inserted in the former. The new 

RIM process enables both the housing 

and the protection to be produced in a 

single step—one plug from one cast. 

The process makes use of polyurethane 

from the supplier’s Baydur E and 

Bayflex E ranges. The PUR for these 

applications can be formulated to meet 

individual requirements—from soft, solid 

elastomers to semi-rigid and impactresistant 

integral skin foams. The materials 

are said to have very short reaction 

times while releasing minimal heat and 

showing low shrinkage. Their low viscosity 

means that even encapsulation of 

difficult-to-reach areas of an electronic 


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“It’s K time” means that about 3,000 exhibitors from 

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concepts – from standard solutions to high-tech 

results. With its first-class range of exhibits, both 

quantitatively and qualitatively, K is the worldwide 

most important business and contact platform for the 

industry. In 19 halls, the future of the industry across 

every sector is represented – from market leaders to 

niche market suppliers. 

Be there when the world class of plastics and rubber 

suppliers meet in Düsseldorf! 

PROCESSING 

TECHNOLOGY 

assembly, such as delicate pin contacts, can be achieved. 

The thermal conductivity of the polyurethanes, and thus the 

heat dissipation of electronic assemblies, can be raised by adding 

fillers and is largely independent of the material’s hardness. 

Fillers also can be used to increase flame retardance. Coloring 

and laser marking are possible. 

In RIM, the two main components—isocyanate and polyol—are 

introduced in liquid form into a countercurrent mixing 

head via a dosing system. These are then homogenized and 

injected into molds at low pressures (6 bar or less). In the mold 

the material reacts to produce polyurethane. Finished parts 

Encapsulating electronic components 

is now simpler with reaction 

injection molding. 

can usually be removed from the mold in less than 2 minutes, 

according to Bayer. 

“A further benefit of manufacturing housings with polyurethane 

is that the RIM process facilitates the production of 

molded parts with wide variations in wall thickness,” explains 

Gerd Viertel, who works on polyurethane encapsulation of 

electronic components at BaySystems. “For example, it would 

also be possible to produce thin housing shells that are rigid 

and lightweight—with fully integrated reinforcing ribs, ventilation 

slits, spring locks, and metallic design elements.” 

Daniel Lüthi, managing director at Isotherm, says his firm 

has developed machines with low discharge rates of less than 

15 g/sec. Shots of as little as 2g are possible using specially 

developed metering equipment. MD 

LSR 

With new silicone, no need 

for rubber gaskets on oil 

pans, cylinder heads, 

and more 

A team consisting of corporations and government have 

created a sealant that could take the manual labor out of 

gasket insertion. 

Chemicals and silicone supplier Wacker, in collaboration with 

the “society for innovation” (Inpro), a joint venture of BASF, 

Daimler, Siemens, ThyssenKrupp, Volkswagen, and the state 

government of Berlin, Germany, has developed a new silicone 

rubber specifically designed to meet tough automotive-industry 



Testing proved the silicone seal is suitable for oil pans, 

cylinder heads, and other components now relying on 

rubber gaskets. 

demands. Testing shows this sealant can be applied in, for 

instance, oil pans, cylinder head covers, and oil separators, and 

can replace the solid rubber gaskets usually inserted in these 

underhood systems, often at great trouble. 

Gaskets are a perpetual problem in many automotive applications. 

Carmakers would love to automate their insertion, 

but oftentimes have to rely on manual labor to ensure a seal is 

perfect. Knowing that history, the new solution from Wacker 

(Munich, Germany) and the Inpro team could find traction 

quickly in the automotive industry. Inpro was formed to help 

speed automotive R&D from academia to commercial use. 

One two-component system proposed relies on Wacker’s 

liquid silicone grade Elastosil 76540 A/B and Ultramid A3HG7 

Q17, a 35% glass-fiber-reinforced polyamide 6/6 supplied by 

BASF. The adhesion between the materials survived all common 

testing conditions. Testing completed at Inpro revealed that no 

other adhesive/plastic combination exhibits such a high level of 

adhesion when sealing against aluminum. The Elastosil grade 

also adheres well to metals and other plastics, however. The 

tests included storage in oil and in a blow-by medium (a condensate 

found in the crankcase of gasoline engines), and thermal 

shock tests between temperatures of -40°C and 150°C. 

The two-component RTV silicone adhesive provides a seal 

over the entire service life of the engine, so that the solid gasket 

can be dispensed of and the number of screw joints reduced. 

According to the developers, this could translate into cost savings 

of 20%-25% per oil pan. Moreover, the flange geometry 

is free of stresses, since no compressive forces are needed for 

forming the vulcanizable sealant. 

Wacker says the material can be easily applied with a 

machine, cures at room temperature, and has excellent resistance 

to oil, heat, and blow-by gases. MD. 

There are many more stories of processing ingenuity online. 

Search by the topic you’re interested in and keep 

up-to-date on the latest technology. 


GEARBOXES FOR 

SINGLE-SCREW EXTRUDERS 

GEARBOXES FOR 

COROTATING AND 

COUNTER-ROTATING 

TWIN SCREW EXTRUDERS 

GEARBOXES FOR 

ELECTRIC INJECTION 

MOULDING MACHINES 

Sede Centrale / Head Office & Factory 

via Manzoni, 46 - 20020 MAGNAGO (MI) - ITALY 

Tel. +39 0331 307616 - Fax: +39 0331 309577 

e-mail: info@zambello.it - http://www.zambello.it 

U.S.A Office: 55 Haul Road Wayne,New Jersey 0740 

Phone: +-1-973-696-4330 or Toll Free: 1866-696-4330 

Fax: +1-973-694-0551 

E-mail : extruder1@usa.net or sales@atstc.com 



MATERIAL THOUGHTS 

BIOPLASTICS NEWS 

Finger lickin’ plastic packaging 

At its 35 stores in South Australia, fast food chain KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) has 

tasked Cardia Bioplastics to supply it with takeout bags converted from Cardia’s own 

patented Compostable material, a biodegradable plastic derived from plant starch. 

Cardio would not quantify the size of the KFC contract in terms of bags or tonnes/ 

year, but did say that increasing sales of Cardia Compostable and Cardia Biohybrid 

resins and finished products processed from the material encouraged the company to 

bring forward the expansion of its manufacturing facility in Nanjing, China. 

The expansion will double manufacturing output there and accommodate the 

administration and sales team servicing the China market. At press time, MPW had not 

yet heard from the company with regard to its actual capacity at the Nanjing site. 

Last autumn Cardia appointed H. Mühlstein & Co. as its distributor for the 

Americas, with three firms also tasked for regional distribution in Europe, and Unic 

Technologies handling it in Southeast Asia. 

KFC’s switch was prompted by the South Australian government’s ban on very 

thin (i.e. takeout) noncompostable plastic bags in May 2009. Cardia’s materials meet 

international standards for compostability, including Europe’s EN 13432, the United 

States’ ASTM D 6400, Japan’s GreenPla, and Australia’s AS 4736-2006. 

Cardia Bioplastics, www.cardiabioplastics.com 

Updated bioplastics 

database compares 

apples to apples 

An earlier database used information provided 

by material suppliers, but its data 

proved incomplete and, due to the use of 

different standards, the data were not comparable. 

Now available online is the second 

generation of the Biopolymer Database, 

managed by the Hannover University of 

Applied Science & Arts (Fachhochschule) 

and M-Base Engineering & Software 

GmbH (Aachen, both Germany). 

This second edition is more valuable 

by far in that the team at Fachhochschule 

Hannover collected material samples 

from most suppliers and performed comparable 

material tests on the various bioplastics 

marketed. This newly generated 

data, broadcast at M-Base’s website, 

allows direct comparison of grades and 

searches over all suppliers. 

The kicker is that the access to the 

system is free. The partners openly state 

that the data content is not complete and 

will be extended on a continuous basis, 

but it sure is a good starting point to be 

better informed about the mechanical 

properties of available bioplastics. 

M-Base Engineering & Software GmbH, 

www.m-base.de 

Loaded PLA proves a 

match for styrenics 

A new grade of the Ingeo polylactic acid 

(PLA)-based bioplastic from NatureWorks 

LLC (Minnetonka, MN) is said to be 

suited for injection molding of parts with 

thermal dimensional stability up to 120°C 

(248ºF), notched Izod impact strength 

greater than 2 ft-lb/in, and modulus of 

around 450,000 psi. Cycle time is compa- 

Test moldings of the new PLA grade hold up to 

heat better than PS and clarified PP. 

rable to that of some styrenics. 

The new grade, dubbed Ingeo 3801X, 

is part of the supplier’s effort to make 

its materials interesting to processors 

beyond the packaging realm. Indeed, 

this new material more likely will see use 

in semi-durable consumer products. The 

KFC switched to compostable bags by Cardia 

Bioplastics at its 35 stores in South Australia. 

new grade combines PLA with a tailored 

additive package. 

In North America, samples of the new 

material are available from the supplier 

plus distributors Ashland and Jamplast. 

In Asia the supplier is marketing samples 

of the material, while in Europe only 

R&D samples are as yet available as 

the supplier awaits an assessment of 

the European Union chemical regulation 

REACH status of the material. 

NatureWorks LLC, www.natureworksllc.com; 

Ashland Inc., www.ashland.com; Jamplast 

Inc., www.jamplast.com 

RESINS & COMPOUNDS 

New PET grade good for 

extrusion blowmolding 

and recycling 

A new grade of PET from supplier 

Invista is said to successfully straddle 

multiple challenges for the material: It 

can be extrusion blowmolded and also 

is suitable for recycling via the standard 

clear PET recycling stream. Jeff Wardat, 

business development manager at the 

supplier, officially introduced the new 

grade last month at the Nova-Pack 2010 

Conference on PET Containers for Food 

& Beverages. 



What’s the big deal? Well, the preferred 

material for clear containers with 

handles today is glycol-modified polyethylene 

terephthalate (PET-G), an amorphous 

polyester sufficiently different from 

PET that it can present a challenge to the 

regrind and clear PET recycling process. 

Standard PET is fine for blowmolding 

of transparent containers via single- or 

two-stage stretch blowmolding, but does 

not have the melt strength required for 

extrusion blowmolding. If handleware 

need not be transparent, then it usually is 

extrusion blowmolded from HDPE. 

Invista says its new material provides 

the required melt strength for extrusion 

blowmolding, and that containers processed 

from it can be tossed into standard 

transparent PET recycling streams. 

The new, modified PET can be processed 

at temperatures and conditions similar 

to standard PET and simultaneously 

provides the required melt strength. It has 

a higher melt temperature than standard 

PET, so processors may need to make 


some modifications to existing extrusion 

blowmolding equipment. The ability to 

recycle the new grade in the clear PET 

stream has been demonstrated, according 

to the APR Critical Guidance protocol. 

Crystal-clear containers with handles, 

which can be recycled in the clear PET 

stream, could be attractive to brand owners 

who have stood with HDPE for these 

applications, sacrificing clarity for a material 

that is easily recycled. 

Invista, www.invista.com 

Solvays adds 

wear-resistant PEEK 

grades to portfolio 

Plastics supplier Solvay Advanced 

Polymers LLC (Alpharetta, GA) expanded 

its materials’ range with the addition 

of wear-resistant grades of its KetaSpire 

polyetheretherketone (PEEK) and 

AvaSpire modified PEEK materials. 

KetaSpire PEEK offers a heat deflection 

temperature up to 315°C. In this product 

family, KT-820 SL30 is a graphite/carbon- 

New developments 

fiber/PTFE-filled grade for nonlubricated 

and lubricated applications. The KT-820 

SL45 grade includes carbon-fiber/PTFE 

grade for use in lubricated environments. 

The AvaSpire line includes AV-755 

SL45, a carbon-fiber/graphite-filled 

grade for high-load-bearing applications 

in lubricated environments. Two 

carbon-fiber/graphite/PTFE-filled grades 

include AV-742 SL30 (high melt flow) 

and AV-722 SL30 (low melt flow) for 

both nonlubricated and lubricated environments. 

AvaSpire grades claim comparable 

strength and modulus, and equivalent 

or better chemical resistance vs. 

comparable PEEK grades at up to a 30% 

cost reduction. 

Solvay Advanced Polymers LLC, 

www.solvayadvancedpolymers.com 

Metal-effect compound 

dresses up talc-fi lled PP 

engine cover 

The engine cover on the Ford Fusion 

Hybrid utilizes a metallic-effect compound 



MATERIAL THOUGHTS 

PolyOne’s talc-filled PP with Maxxam FX Metal 

effect gets a good run in the engine cover on the 

Ford Focus hybrid. 

from PolyOne that mimics the luster of 

a painted polymer. Injection molded by 

MPC Inc. (Walworth, WI), the engine 

cover uses PolyOne’s Maxxam FX Metal. 

The talc-filled polypropylene (PP) compound 

fulfills several requirements, including 

a melt flow rate of 3-11 g/10 min, 

talc content from 17%-23%, minimum 

flexural modulus of 2.8 MPa, Izod impact 

strength of 1.7 kJ/m 2 , and, given its location 

under the hood and above the engine, 

a heat-deflection temperature of 56°C. 

Knitlines on the moldings were avoided by 

having the melt flow fronts come together 

along the edges of the cover. By eliminating 

painting, MPC estimates that it saves 

approximately $800,000/year, with that 

figure including rates charged by an outside 

vendor, and the cost of transporting 

parts to and from that vendor. 

PolyOne, www.polyone.com 

List presents good look 

at processors’ material 

wish lists 

Want to find a material data sheet? The 

answer to that question often takes plastics 

processors to IDES Inc., a popular 

online search tool and informational 

resource for plastic materials. 

The company, based in Laramie, 

WY, has published a report of the most 

popular plastic materials of 2009, based 

on the number of times a material’s 

datasheet was accessed. Topping the list 

is Sabic Innovative Plastics’ Lexan at 

91,394; the top competing polycarbonate, 

Bayer MaterialScience’s Makrolon, 

was seventh with 37,334. DuPont’s Zytel 

polyamide came in second with its data 

sheet accessed 61,210 times. 

The IDES website offers processors 

free access to data sheets on plastics 

offered by more than 700 suppliers. 

IDES reports that in 2009, the users 

of its site downloaded 3.2 million data 

sheets, a 33% increase over 2008. To 

view the full report, go to www.ides. 

com/reports/2009. 

IDES Inc., www.ides.com 

ADDITIVES & MASTERBATCHES 

This masterbatch 

squelches smells and 

bacteria; that one wards 

off termites 

Much of the Northern Hemisphere 

remains ensconced in a cold, snow-covered 

world, but spring’s approach is not 

far off, bringing with it warm weather 

(good) and the bugs and bacteria that 

thrive in it (not so good). Getting ahead 

of those pests is the job of new master- 

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batches brought to market by Polyvel 

and Clariant Masterbatches. 

From Polyvel (Hammonton, NJ) comes 

two new series of masterbatches to help 

processors supply their customers with 

products on which bacteria cannot find 

purchase. The first of the developments, 

the VA series of masterbatches, contain 

silver, trichlosan, or proprietary agents 

that effectively kill microorganisms such 

as fungus, E. coli, and salmonella. These 

masterbatches are suitable for inclusion in 

most thermoplastics and can be injection 

molded and extruded. Since bacteria can 

emit unpleasant odors, antimicrobials are 

a method of controlling unwanted scents. 

When the source of the smells is not 

bacteria, Polyvel’s ZO series of odormanaging 

masterbatches help end-product 

scent improvement. 

Clariant Masterbatches, meanwhile, 

has introduced its CESA-antimicro brand 

of anti-termite masterbatch for use in 

compounds based on polyvinyl chloride 

(PVC). These masterbatches are marketed 

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Clariant’s new masterbatch puts a stop to termites’ 

wood-chomping ways. 

to processors of wire and cable. 

Anti-termite additives are not new, but 

the Clariant masterbatches are supplied as 

pellets, enabling processors to avoid the 

use of insecticidal oils that are applied to 

PVC pellets or granules before they are 

processed. Pelletized masterbatches generally 

are easier to handle than the oils, 

and have the added benefit that they can 

be added directly into the extruder. Cable 

processors in the Middle East already have 

approved the anti-termite masterbatches, 

says the supplier, and their effectiveness 

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New developments 

also has been confirmed in independent 

laboratory testing. 

“Anti-termite masterbatches can be 

added during the wire-jacketing process 

simply by dosing them into the stream 

of natural material at the extruder 

feedthroat. It is not necessary to maintain 

a stock of oil-treated PVC along with the 

untreated compound, so inventory costs 

are reduced,” explains Davor Horvat, 

Clariant Masterbatches’ head of marketing 

consumer goods–Southwest Europe, 

India, Middle East, and Africa. 

The masterbatches incorporate an EPA 

(U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)registered 

pesticide with a PVC carrier. 

Clariant also offers a masterbatch formulated 

with a carrier resin that is compatible 

with polyolefins. An addition rate of 1% 

is recommended for both masterbatches. 

They have been found to be effective 

against other insects too, including flies, 

cockroaches, fleas, and bedbugs. 

Polyvel Inc., www.polyvel.com; Clariant Masterbatches, 

www.clariant.masterbatches.com 

PREVENT 

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PRODUCT WATCH 

PRODUCT FOCUS 

MATERIALS HANDLING 

Marketing marches down new avenues 

to appeal to processors 

Be it via the digital highway or streets 

covered in tar, suppliers of materials handling 

machinery have recently introduced 

some interesting new means to attract 

their plastics processing clientele. 

Processors work around the clock, 

PDAs and other digital tools keep them 

informed (stressed?) around the clock, 

so why shouldn’t they have the option to 

purchase equipment around the clock? 

That’s part of the premise behind a 

program begun recently at Conair (Cranberry 

Twp., PA), called Conair BuyNow, 

enabling the manufacturer’s customers 

to purchase, online, equipment and spare 

parts. Processors can log into the online 

store through its website, www.conair 

group.com, and even put the purchase on their own plastic 

(credit card), or use a purchase order. 

Larry Doyle, Conair VP for global sales and marketing, 

commented, “Our research has shown that most of our customers 

are very comfortable with the idea of buying equipment 

online and we’re excited about being able to offer this 

additional service.” The company continues with all of its conventional 

sales and service channels as well. At press time the 

online store was only available to processors in Canada and 

the U.S., and included free shipping “for a limited time only.” 

Rival supplier Maguire Products Inc. (Aston, PA) offers 

interested processors its own online experience, a series of 

seven streaming videos the company made available at its web- 

EXTRUSION 

Plastic fi lm processors 

offered better thickness 

gauge for online use 

A new thickness gauge for plastics film 

processors is said not only to offer 

significant improvements in online measuring 

functionality, but also to be eminently 

suitable regardless of the type of 

film a processor’s line is running, be it 

clear, pigmented, or even voided/pearlized 

BOPP films. 

Called the FG710S, this infrared sensor 

debuted last month at the Plastec 

Steve Maguire stands with his film’s costar, 

the company’s purging recovery system. 

West trade show in Anaheim, CA. NDC 

Infrared Engineering (Irwindale, CA), 

the supplier, says this new thickness 

gauge delivers its users high-precision 

measurement of the basis weight or 

thickness of single- or multilayer films, 

with capabilities not previously available 

in an online sensor. Its accuracy and precision 

are unaffected by nominal changes 

in lighting, humidity, temperature, and 

web pass-line height and flutter. 

One novelty, explains NDC, is the 

gauge’s full-spectrum optics capability 

covering both the near-infrared and a 

significant portion of the mid-infrared 

site, www.maguire.com. It’s an approach 

not many companies in this industry have 

yet taken, although the number of plasticsprocessing-related 

videos on websites such 

as YouTube continues to grow. 

Maguire Products’ videos run between 

5 and 10 minutes and offer an Englishlanguage 

explanation and demonstration 

by a Maguire expert. The videos currently 

available include ones of the company’s 

LPD dryer, its MicroPlus blender, and 

gravimetric feeder. Maguire’s Novatec 

subsidiary last summer opened what it 

terms its “Virtual Trade Show On-Line” 

of hosted video introductions and explanations 

of that company’s equipment. 

Taking an entirely different tack to 

introduce processors to its equipment is Vortex Valves (Salina, 

KS), a manufacturer of dry bulk material handling equipment 

that is taking its show on the road, literally. To aid its sales 

efforts, Vortex launched its Mobile Display Unit (MDU), 

which is capable of traveling to a potential customer’s site, 

hooking up to its production process, and providing a live 

demonstration of the equipment’s capabilities, explains Russ 

Barragree, marketing manager for Vortex Valves. 

The company recently launched a new MDU in China and 

has two in the U.S., one in Mexico and two in Europe, one of 

which is just being completed. 

The Conair Group Inc., www.conairgroup.com; Maguire Products Inc., 

www.maguire.com; Vortex Valves, www.vortexvalves.com 

NDC’s FG710S infrared sensor thickness gauge 

can measure clear, pigmented, or even voided/ 

pearlized BOPP films. 



spectrum. This expanded spectrum 

allows for many more measurements to 

be made while also improving precision 

on established measurements. To wit, 

the FG710S can make up to six independent 

measurements simultaneously, 

making it helpful to any films processor 

and maybe especially so to those extruding 

barrier film, whose money can be 

made or lost based in large part on 

how accurately their lines distribute the 

costly barrier material. 

An array of customizable IR filters is 

offered with the new gauge to meet a customer’s 

specific film measurement requirements; 

NDC makes these filters itself. 

NDC Infrared Engineering, www.ndc.com 

HDPE bottles to automotive 

sheet? Screen changer 

helps make it work 

The V-type screen changer from Kreyenborg 

GmbH (Munster, Germany) already 

is established in a number of commercial 

extrusion lines processing PET, and now 


the first of these filters is in operation in 

a polyolefin line. The customer, a sheet 

processor, relies on the screen changer to 

help it meet quality standards as it directly 

extrudes shredded HDPE blowmolded 

articles into thermoformable sheet for the 

automotive industry at a rate of 900 kg of 

HDPE processed/hr. 

The unnamed processor is using recyclate 

from production and postconsumer 

waste streams. In the V-type screen 

changer, the melt is guided onto four 

screen cavities, with a filter area in this 

case of 244 cm 2 each. The melt leaving 

the extruder is split into four melt streams. 

After filtration, these melt streams are 

brought together again in the heated steel 

housing. Each screen cavity is equipped 

with a backflush pestle that conveys any 

contaminants to the outside. The backflush 

is started fully automatically when it 

reaches a predefined pressure differential, 

which represents the pollution degree 

of the screen pack. Due to the power of 

the backflush, flushing need not be as 

Innovation & Optimization Place 

frequent as with conventional systems, 

according to the manufacturer. 

Screens may be changed during production; 

the melt flow is guided through 

the screen cavities, which remain in the 

system. Thus the screen changer works 

not only independently of the system pressure, 

but also continuously. 

Kreyenborg Group, www.kreyenborg.com 

Better-quality product 

and payback in a year 

on blown fi lm lines 

That’s the claim made by Gneuss Inc. 

(Matthews, NC and Bad Oeynhausen, 

Germany) for blown film processors 

keen to integrate more reclaim or recycled 

material into their extrusion lines. 

The manufacturer of polymer filtration 

systems markets its SFXmagnus for these 

applications. 

Stephan Gneuss, managing director at 

the company, says, “On blown film applications, 

the return on investment for the 

SFXmagnus is usually around one year— 



PRODUCT WATCH 

Gneuss’s rotary screen filters help blown film 

processors use more recyclate without dropping 

film quality. 

and this is for retrofitting an existing line 

where the replacement of an existing 

screen changer has to be justified.” 

One of the company’s recent blown 

film customers, a processor of three-layer 

polyethylene garbage bag film, retrofitted 

an extrusion line with an SFXmagnus 

and reported it was able to increase the 

percentage of recyclate in its recipe from 

25% to 45%. Another blown film processor 

of single-layer packaging film was able 

to use up to 100% recycled material. 

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The SFXmagnus, like all of the company’s 

melt filtration systems, is based on 

the rotary disk system. Screen changes can 

be made with no need to stop processing. 

Because it is process-constant, very fine 

filters can be used, leading to high-quality 

film with tight tolerances. 

Gneuss, www.gneuss.com 

THERMOFORMING 

We want to be YOUR 

competitive edge. 

(215) 675-7100 

www.TiniusOlsen.com 

Infrared heaters help 

put the “thermo” into 

thermoforming 

A better understanding of what works, 

and what doesn’t, when using infrared 

heaters could prove profitable for thermoformers, 

and even more so for processors 

of high-volume packaging applications. 

According to heating element supplier 

Ceramicx (Ballydehob, Ireland), simply 

reviewing and renewing the infrared 

heating platen can lead to a 30%-40% 

improvement in operational efficiency of 

most packaging thermoforming lines. 

Place 

Those numbers come from Frank Wilson, 

founder and managing director of 

Ceramicx, who reminds processors that 

these oft-forgotten assets in a processing 

machine also require maintenance and 

analysis. Otherwise, output and quality 

will suffer. As a general rule, he notes, 

heat systems are very rarely the cause of 

production problems. Instead, the complexity 

of the part’s design, its dimensions, 

the depth of the thermoforming “draw,” 

and the characteristics of the material 

composition are the prime culprits when 

it comes to naming a problem. 

The essence of infrared heating involves 

three factors: absorption, transmission, 

and radiation. During thermoforming, 

infrared ceramic heaters are generally 

mounted on reflectors, which are then 

arrayed upon a platen—or two—which is 

part of a production line. 

The performance of the background 

reflectors—their material composition— 

and the performance of the platens are 

vital in directing the infrared heating to 

plasticstoday.com/mpw


the plastic sheet being processed. Stainless 

steel is not an adequate material for 

use in infrared reflection as it will absorb 

a high percentage of the emitted energy. 

Over time this will cause burnout of the 

electrical wiring behind the reflector and 

will also start to cause discoloration. Polished 

aluminum is in most cases the best 

reflector for ceramic infrared heating, 

but at temperatures greater than 500°C, 

it also will start to fail—but then, such 

high temperatures will rarely be seen in a 

thermoforming line. 

Over time, he notes, as a platen system 

starts to discolor and degrade in operation 

due to dirt and other materials, the 

system’s reflectivity will be compromised. 

That is when the machine operator will 

typically try to increase the temperature 

in order to achieve the same performance. 

Regular review and maintenance could 

preempt this lack of control and the extra 

cost for the higher energy bill. 

The ideal control is to mount a thermocouple 

on the existing reflector system 


COMPRESSION MOLDING 

Iowa processor installs 

three huge presses 

Greenerd Press & Machine Co. (Nashua, 

NH) recently installed three massive 

4000-ton hydraulic compression molding 

presses at Ashley Industrial Molding 

(AIM), a sheet molding compound 

(SMC) processor in Oelwein, IA serving 


This giant compression press’s journey took it 

to Iowa processor AIM. 

the agricultural, construction, forestry, industrial, and military markets. Standing 

34 ft above and 11 ft below the shop floor, and weighing about 500 tonnes each, 

this may be the largest compression press installation in North America. 

The machines were built by Tianjin Tianduan Press Co. Ltd. (Tianjin, China), 

with whom Greenerd has a North American alliance. Greenerd says Americanmade 

parts were imported to China for the presses’ vital operational components. 

Machine controls, for example, feature a touch-screen Allen Bradley Industrial PC, 

Versa View 6181P-12TPXPH, and Windows XP software. 

Scott Pflughoeft, AIM’s manufacturing VP, commented that “Greenerd had all 

three presses assembled, installed, and in production in just 60 days.” That followed 

a journey across the Pacific with the machine components taking 60% of an 

ocean freighter, a three-barge shipment up the Mississippi River from New Orleans 

to Dubuque, IA, and 53 semi-trailer trips from Dubuque to Oelwein. 

Greenerd Press & Machine Co., www.greenerd.com 

Engineered for Performance 

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to keep an eye on the temperature. When 

this starts to rise—taking more and more 

energy—the user should be alerted to take 

action. The savings could be considerable. 

Ceramicx, www.ceramicx.com 

WELDING & JOINING 

Pressure-sensitive fi lm 

helps ultrasonic welders 

sing a happy tune 

The supplier of Pressurex film has developed 

another way for plastics processors 

to use its novel pressure-indicating film. 

We featured the film some months ago 

in an article on its potential use as a 

low-cost and rapid means to determine 

whether injection molds’ parting lines 

are properly mated (March 2009 MPW, 

p. 18). Now the company reveals the 

material also is suitable for ensuring that 

the horn and anvil of an ultrasonic weld- 

Using Pressurex for setup in ultrasonic welding 

helps align the horn and anvil. 

ing system are properly aligned. 

An ultrasonic welder employs vibration, 

force, and time to form a weld by 

pressing the parts to be joined together 

and scrubbing them against one another 

to break up and disperse any surface 

oxides and contaminants. The resulting 

clean surfaces are held together by atomic 

attraction across material surfaces. 

To perform a weld, the materials 

are placed on an anvil and the horn is 

pressed onto them. Then the horn begins 

to vibrate at either 20,000 or 40,000 Hz 

for approximately 250 msec to form the 

weld. The more uniform pressure exerted 

by the horn across the entire weld area, 

the better the weld. Proper setup of the 

welding unit requires the horn and the 

anvil to be properly aligned and the horn 

tip adjusted to evenly distribute pressure. 


Sensor Products (Madison, NJ), 

which supplies Pressurex film, says this 

alignment can be improved and accelerated 

through repeated tests with its film. 

When placed between the horn and the 

anvil, the film, which is 4-8 mils thick 

and flexible, instantaneously and permanently 

changes color directly proportional 

to the actual pressure applied. 


The magnitude of the pressure (in psi or 

kg/cm2 ) on the film can be determined by 

comparing color variation results to a color 

correlation chart. A user sees where there 

are pressure variations across the weld 

zone; these variations are generally caused 

by lack of alignment between the horn and 

anvil or by dirt or residue on the horn. 

Sensor Products, www.sensorprod.com 


A bright 

future 

By Tony Deligio 

The amount of solar energy that falls 

on the planet in one hour is enough 

to generate sufficient power for every 

person on earth for one year. 

DuPont Tedlar polyvinyl fluoride films 

see use as backsheets for photovoltaic 

modules. 

Of all the reasons that solar energy 

is capturing record levels of 

investment and spurring frenetic 

activity, its tremendous potential, laid 

out by Dan Cunningham of BP Solar 

(Frederick, MD), is the primary driver for 

the market. Participating in the Chemical 

Development & Marketing Assn.’s 

(CDMA) “Opportunities for Chemicals 

and Materials: Capitalizing on Wind and 

Solar” conference held last December at 

the University of Pennsylvania’s chemistry 

department, Cunningham addressed a 

crowd that included the biggest names in 

plastics supply—BASF, Bayer Material- 

Science, Dow, and DuPont to name a 

few—all of which appreciate the extraordinary 

opportunity the burgeoning solar 

energy sector holds for plastics. 

As impressive as the current boom 

is, Mike Eckhart, president of ACORE 

(American Council of Renewable Energy), 

forecasted an even brighter future 

for solar at the same CDMA event, particularly 

for the United States, which has 

only recently thrown the full weight of 

government subsidies and tax benefits 

behind the technology. “My 

prediction is in two years, solar 

will really take off,” Eckhart 

said. Admitting that the U.S. is 

the “laggard” in solar, Eckhart 

said he believes the country will 

catch up to the current market 

leader, Germany, which 

had 2000 MW of new solar 

capacity installed in 2009. 

Plastics are seeing growing use in 

photovoltaic (PV) solar modules, 

increasing their lifetime and efficiency, 

and allowing lower costs per installed 

watt of energy. 

Eckhart has stood at the intersection 

of government and renewable energy 

before, starting with the Carter administration 

in the late 1970s, when the U.S., 

still shell shocked from its impotence 

during the oil embargoes, found religion 

with renewable energy. Carter placed 

solar panels on the White House in 

1979, but his successor, Ronald Reagan, 

had them removed in 1986, and renewable 

energy symbolically, and in reality, 

faded into the background once again. 

Following the most recent oil shock in 

2008 and with growing concern that the 

emission of carbon dioxide from fossilfuel-derived 

energy could be having a 

deleterious effect on the planet’s climate, 

the U.S. government has once again 

taken an interest in renewable energy. 

The Dept. of Energy’s stated goal is that 

by 2025, 25% of the energy generated in 

the U.S. will be from renewable resources. 

At a state level, 29 local governments 

have already mandated that local utilities 

source a certain percentage of the energy 

they create from those same resources. 

In late November, Eckhart and 

ACORE conducted a policy meeting in 

the Cannon Caucus room at the U.S. 

House of Representatives, sketching out 

the policy framework that could start 

the country on that energy roadmap. 

ACORE has determined that the U.S. 

will need to invest $30 billion-$35 billion 

to attain that 25% goal. In 2008, 

$18 billion was invested in energy projects, 

with 50% in renewable energy. 


At the CDMA event, Mark Thirsk, managing partner with 

Linx Consulting, forecast that the number of installed photovoltaic 

(PV) megawatts will climb from 6000 in 2008 to nearly 

16,000 by 2012, with the U.S. and China vying to overtake 

Germany as market leader. PV technology comes in two primary 

formats at this time, thin film and crystalline silicon, with 

both systems heavily reliant on plastics. 

Anatomy of a solar cell 

Although there are many variations, BP Solar’s Cunningham 

says solar cells can largely be separated into four distinct 

groups: mono crystalline silicon, multi (poly) crystalline silicon, 

amorphous silicon, and cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin film. 

Respective efficiencies in converting photons to electrons for 

the four are: 14%-18%, 12%-16%, 6%-7%, and 8%-10%. 

A typical crystalline silicon system, working from the back 

to the front, consists of a polymer backsheet (about 125 μm 

thick), EVA (random copolymer of ethylene and vinyl acetate), 

solar cell, second EVA layer with 95%-plus light transmission, 

and glass. Other elements in the module include encapsulants, 

which act as the glue for the whole package; frames and framing 

adhesives; tabbing ribbons to connect cells; and junction boxes 

and cables. Cunningham says BP Solar uses a polycondensation 

polyester for the backsheet because of its performance under 

moisture and heat. The backsheet requires good moisture barrier 

and must pass a UL fire test with a Class C rating or better. 

This structure, and others in the industry, is not immutable, 

however. “The PV industry is going through massive growth, 

and is constantly looking for new materials,” Cunningham 

says. “New materials need to be cost effective and drive the life 

of PV products beyond 25 years.” Regardless of the path chosen, 

according to Cunningham, in a sunny 

climate, a PV cell will generate more than 

20 times the electricity used to make it. 

Sarah Kurtz, a researcher with the 

National Renewable Energy Laboratory 

(NREL; Golden, CO), discussed the present 

anatomy of thin-film cells at the same 

CDMA conference. In addition to CdTe, 

common thin-film systems include amorphous 

silicon and CuIn(Ga)Se (copper 

indium gallium selenium). Both structures 

feature layers of EVA, with the cell in 

these instances sandwiched on the outside 

by glass, and the EVA essentially acting 

as an adhesive. It is a fast-changing market, 

however, with Kurtz estimating there 

are currently 100 companies developing 

thin-film products. The industry is pushing 

for new substrates to replace glass, 

aiming for materials that are flexible, 

lightweight, resistant to UV radiation and 

moisture, and, in some instances, able to 


Sun power 

withstand process temperatures of 600°C and up. 

Thirsk reported that the total annual crystalline silicon 

solar capacity in 2008 was roughly 10,500 MW, with thin-film 

capacity of 1900 MW. Although there is less of the capacity 

installed, thin-film modules have achieved cost-of-energy 

rates that drive closer to grid parity. Thirsk believes the total 

materials market for PV will climb from $2 billion in 2008 to 

around $9 billion by 2015, with backsheet, polyvinyl butyral 

(PVB), and EVA accounting for roughly half of all demand. 

Within backsheets, there are opportunities for fluoropolymers 

and PET, while encapsulant materials can include crosslinkable 

elastomers like EVA, polyurethanes, and silicones as well as 

thermoplastics like PVB, TPU, olefins, and ionoplast. 

Targeting glass 

DuPont, which has been a material and technology supplier to 

the photovoltaic (PV) industry for more than 25 years, provides 

films, resins, encapsulation sheets, flexible substrates, and conductive 

pastes for both crystalline silicon and thin-film modules. 

Simone Arizzi, global technology director for DuPont photovoltaic 

solutions, says the market has consistently expanded at rates ranging 

from 20%-40%. “This is a high-growth-rate industry, and 

it’s going to stay a high-growth-rate industry for the foreseeable 

future,” Arizzi says. “Materials have a very important role to play 

in guaranteeing the future success of the photovoltaic market.” 

Arizzi says in the last 12 months, DuPont has invested $300 

million in new capacity to serve the industry. The company’s 

Teflon film is used in front sheets, with Elvax-brand EVA used 

as encapsulant, Rynite PET applied in junction boxes and 

structural parts, and polyvinyl fluorides (PVF) such as its Tedlar, 

Mylar, and Melinex brands found in the backsheet. In thin 

DuPont’s photovoltaic encapsulants act as a glue for solar modules, sealing them 

against the elements. 


Sun power 

Ascent Solar utilizes DuPont’s Solamet PV metallizations to help enhance the 

efficiency of thin-film PV modules. 

films, Kapton polyimide, Teonex PEN, and Teijin Melinex ST 

polyester are used for substrates. 

Arizzi says DuPont’s current research is focused on two areas: 

improving the performance of existing materials in areas like 

durability, barrier, and optical clarity; and addressing opportunities 

for material replacement within the cells. In the latter category, 

DuPont is working on a polymer substitution for glass. 

“Glass is rigid but polymers are flexible,” Arizzi says, “so 

actually, one of the reasons that we are really excited about this 

research direction is the fact that we believe that many of the 

modules of the future will not only be lighter, but also more flexible. 

Polymers here are actually an enabling technology.” Arizzi 

says the company is in a piloting phase for glass replacement, 

utilizing a PVF, with commercialization one to two years away. 

Sabic Innovative Plastics began to focus on the PV industry 

around five years ago, according to Andy Verheijden, global 

product marketing manager of solar energy at the company. 

Since that time, it has been able to gain 

market acceptance for its Noryl family 

of amorphous blends of PPO polyphenylene 

ether and polystyrene, as well as 

some adoption of Lexan copolymer polycarbonate. 

Noryl has already replaced 

metal in junction boxes and connectors, 

and the material was recently chosen 

by a North American firm for a solar 

module frame, using an injection molded 

glass-filled version to replace metal. The 

company is also at work developing 

materials for use in backsheets. 

Verheijden also describes the market 

as “booming,” noting that last year, in 

a down time for the economy, the sector’s 

demand for Noryl grew by 85%. 

To support the explosive growth, Sabic 

IP is in the planning stage of setting up 

its own testing facility for solar thermal 

applications in the Netherlands, with the 

lab set to open this month. Within a year’s 

time, it would also like to open a test center 

for the PV industry, which would become 

a center of excellence for the market. Verheijden 

says the company hopes to have it 

operational in the next year. 

Jim Bratcher, market segment leader for 

Honeywell’s Photovoltaic Packaging business, 

has also seen market demand increase 

of late, saying prior to 2008, annual growth 

easily surpassed 30%, with similar gains 

expected in 2010 after a blip in 2009. 

“Many analysts are forecasting a return to 

former growth rates within a few years or 

even less,” Bratcher says, “driven by anticipated 

increased demand and new subsidies in North America.” 

In 2008, the company began supplying a backing film called 

PowerShield to the industry. The sandwich structures laminate 

together barrier, dielectric, and bonding layers. Bratcher says 

the key enabling component is the ECTFE fluoropolymer 

barrier film layer that’s made from a proprietary formulation 

developed and produced by Honeywell. 

As the U.S and other nations debate the ongoing role of 

renewable energy, DuPont’s Arizzi says government programs 

to spur adoption should be viewed in the proper light. “Incentives 

are key,” Arizzi explains. “They should be seen as an 

investment for the future. Looking back at what has happened 

in countries where solar has developed, incentive mechanisms 

have been a necessary condition for creating the industry. 

Some people see it as a cost; in reality it’s an investment. I’m 

convinced that the U.S. will catch up and become one of the 

leaders in the solar industry.” MPW 

Applications in injection molding 

Not all of the money in solar power will 

be spent on complex film laminates 

developed by multinational comporations; 

there are opportunities aplenty 

even for small to midsized processors. 

This photo, taken at last fall’s Fakuma 

trade show in Germany, shows one 

of the more straightforward potential 

applications for plastics processors: 

a console (support) for a solar collector. 

A cutaway hangs on the wall with a 

complete solar collector displayed in the 

foreground. 

Dutch injection molder HSV took the 

part, which was being thermoformed in 

lower volumes, and now “tens of thousands 

of these parts will be made per 

year” on a 2300-tonne machine, according 

to company officials who spoke with 

MPW. The 8-kg polypropylene part is 

formed with just two injection points. Part 

costs are 30% less than they were when 

thermoformed. 


EXTRUSION 

PROCESSORS’ 

PROBLEMS 

MEET THEIR 

MATCH 

By MPW Staff 

The launch of our Extrusion Expert series of 

webinars in January generated great feedback 

and a long list of questions. Here we share with 

you not only the questions your competitors and 

peers asked, but also the answers to those. It’s an 

extrusion information overload.

If we’d held it in a lecture hall, it 

would have been packed to the 

rafters. Almost 300 processors 

attended the first webinar in our Extrusion 

Expert series to learn from our 

host, Allan Griff, consulting engineer 

and extrusion expert with more than 

40 years of experience in the field. In 

that webinar, the first of a series of six 

planned this year, Allan presented on 

“Data acquisition: Get the numbers.” Allan Griff 

The questions poured in, and Allan answered them during 

the event or in e-mails sent after the event. We looked at the 

questions, considered how many processors may have the same 

or similar issues, and knew it made perfect sense to share some 

of this Q&A with our entire readership. 

Some of the questions pertain directly to Allan’s webinar 

slides whereas others are more general in nature; his answers 

also go beyond “getting the numbers.” Hope you enjoy the 

article. Join us for the rest of the Extrusion Expert series, and 

we look forward to hearing your tales on how you put this 

information to work in your shop. 

Q: Is throat cooling necessary if feed is good? 

AG: Technically, no, but practically, yes. It depends on the 

plastic being run and the construction of the feed area—how 

easily heat conducts up from the barrel into the throat and 

even the lower portions of the hopper. Water cooling is useful 

there to keep the metal from getting hot enough for particles to 

melt and stick to those surfaces. That would make the feeding 

passage narrower, and in some cases that might limit rate, or 

almost as bad, make the feed erratic. 

Plastics vary a lot as to how easily they stick to a hot surface. 

Some slippery ones won’t stick at all, while others may 

be very adherent—obviously, the water cooling would be more 

useful with these. In addition, particle shape matters—flaky 

ones (like chopped film or thin bottles) have more surface and 

less mass, and are more likely to stick. 

Seldom is throat cooling confined to the throat, which is the 

vertical passage from the hopper down into the screw. Most 

extruders are made with a feed casting—a metal casting that 

includes the feed opening and the throat above it, as well as 

the surrounding for the first few flights of the screw, and the 

casting has water passages that cool all these places. 

This presents a problem in controlling the rear barrel, where 

sticking to the barrel is necessary for good solids conveying 

(my Key Principle #5) (Ed. note: Allan’s Key Principles of 

Extrusion are available at www.griffex.com/tenkeys.pdf). The 

typical extruder sacrifices some of this control via this cooled 

feed section. It can be argued that the cooled zone prevents 

melted material from leaking backward around the shank of 

the screw; that is possible with low-viscosity melts and large 

clearances, but is seldom a problem. At best, we can have some 


EXTRUSION 

thermal isolation of the feed casting from the actual barrel. 

Part of maintenance is to check the circuit to see if water is 

really flowing and how much is flowing. This becomes a baseline 

to compare in the future. (If you know what good is, you’ll 

know what fishy is.) Also see if the valve that adjusts and shuts 

off the flow is operative. I remember one case where the water 

was permanently connected, no valves were visible, and no one 

knew how much was flowing or how to turn it off! 

The best way to find out if such cooling is needed is to turn 

it off and watch what happens over time. It may take many 

hours for the throat and lower hopper to heat up to trouble 

temperature, but if you are experimenting, you can follow it 

with an infrared gun and see when you have equilibrium. You 

can do this easily with small machines. For larger machines, 

production people may not want to do experiments, so it may 

make sense to leave it alone because the water doesn’t cost much 

and the machine comes prepared to do it. It will be most useful 

for adhesion-prone materials (ethylene copolymers, plasticized 

PVC), but for pelletized resins like nylons and HDPE it may be 

worth looking into the cooling, after figuring out how much it 

really does cost. PET is a special case, as it easily sticks to itself if 

not completely recrystallized, especially in flake form. 

Sometimes you have to wait for a problem to occur that can 

be traced to erratic feed, or else see actual material stuck to the 

throat on inspection. 

Q: What is the best way to reduce gel levels in HDPE? 

AG: First, make sure you are talking about gels by examining 

them in a low-power microscope. Gels are uncolored, even if 

the resin is colored, and roundish but not perfectly round in 

shape. They won’t dissolve in solvents for the base resin, but 

that’s academic for HDPE as anything that dissolves HDPE is 

something you won’t want to work with. 

If you are sure these are “classic” gels, the next question is 


EXTRUSION 

whether they are coming in with 

the resin or are created in the process. 

The best way to find this out 

is to run the virgin resin through a 

clean, small extruder. It’s virtually 

impossible for gels to form from 

clean resin in just a few minutes. 

Thus, if the product comes out 

with gels from the beginning, and 

the gel content stays more or less 

the same for a while, they are in 

the resin and you have a good case 

for rebate or refund if it was sold 

to you as clean. There is even a 

machine on the market that blows 

film and counts “discontinuities 

per square meter of surface” to 

quantify gel content. 

You can also get the same 

answer on production machinery, 

but it is less precise. If the gels don’t 

appear for a while, maybe a few hours or even a few shifts, and 

the material and conditions stay the same, it’s likely that they are 

forming in the system, most likely the adapter and die in places 

where the melt is moving most slowly (large diameters, sharp 

bends). Formulation matters: Some processing aids coat the 

inside of the flow paths and discourage gel formation, as well as 

reduce backpressure and thus allow lower melt temperature. 

Resins vary in thermal stability, too, and less-stable materials 

will degrade faster into gels and (eventually) black or brown 

particles. Running a small product (low mass rate) in a large 

machine will contribute to this, as the melt must move more 

slowly and stay hot longer. If the gels start as soon as the suspected 

resin is used and stay relatively constant, they are in the feed. 

You can, of course, have both things going on at once, where 

there are plenty of gels in the incoming resin, but after a while 

you are adding to them by degrading materials in the head/die. 

Q: Which of the screw segments or zones is very important? 

AG: They are all important, of course, but the one I was referring 

to as special was the rear (first) barrel zone. In this zone, 

unlike the others, the barrel wall is not fully coated with melt, 

but is still usually well above the melt temperature of the plastic, 

so the particles can stick to the barrel as needed for good 

“inpush.” Grooved-barrel extruders, typically used for HDPE 

film, are an exception; the particles slip on the barrel but only 

in the forward direction, but that zone is still independently 

important. 

I try to separate this rear zone from the others so that people 

will consider it alone, or perhaps combined with #2 in a long 

extruder with five or six zones, rather than move all the settings 

up or down in unison. There is an optimum setting of 

zone #1, not necessarily the hottest or the coldest, where the 

sticking is best—any hotter and the particles melt on contact 

and slide around self-lubricated, and inpush starts to fall off. 

Figure 1. The screw-cooling fitting on the rear of the 

extruder wobbled back and forth with each revolution, 

showing the count, but the loose fit stressed the 

connections. 

This optimum will vary with the 

resin, with the feed temperature, 

and with the screw speed, so it 

really is best found by “trial and 

success,” and I am thus skeptical 

of any proposed settings that 

are alleged to apply to any one 

material in all cases. 

The rear barrel temperature 

is also the “aspirin” of the troubleshooter—it’s 

what you change 

if you don’t really know what else 

to do, especially when processing 

semicrystalline polymers. I 

have seen it resolve problems of 

surging, excess pressure, or melt 

temperature and air entrapment, 

and wouldn’t be surprised to hear 

other stories, including some in 

which it made things worse. 

Q: How and why does overheating HDPE make it stronger? 

AG: When any polymer is heated, there is some chain breakage. 

As might be imagined, the hotter the temperature and the 

longer the time at that temperature, the more the degradation. 

However, there is also a cross-linking and chain-growing reaction 

that takes place where the loose, broken ends of a molecule 

look for and find places on some other chain to attach. 

This makes that molecule larger and stronger and compensates 

for the weakening effect of chain breakage. In the case of some 

HDPE grades, the viscosity actually increases (equivalent of 

melt index decrease). But this can’t go on indefinitely, because 

the breakage is normally inhibited by antioxidant in the formulation, 

which is consumed as the melt remains at the high 

temperature, and eventually is used up. After that, the breakage 

occurs faster than the cross-linking and the viscosity starts to 

fall again, representing a weakening effect. 

I was involved in these experiments many years ago, when 

we were trying to show that the use of “scrap” HDPE pipe 

did not necessarily weaken the pressure pipe made from such 

a mixture. We ran several HDPEs in a torque rheometer for 

up to an hour, far longer than the usual residence time in an 

extruder, and sure enough, the torque (measure of viscosity) 

What’s a webinar? 

Many of you know already that a webinar is a seminar held 

via the Internet. Here’s how we do it. We limit them to 60 

minutes. They are a free source of information. Our goal in 

each webinar is to provide plastics processors with information 

they can use to improve their business (not coincidentally, the 

goal of this magazine, too). 

During the webinar, you hear the presenter but cannot speak 

to him (imagine 250 people around the world talking at once 

on the same phone line). As an attendee you can submit your 

questions via an instant messaging-type service. Questions are 

answered during the event or via e-mail soon thereafter. 


that had slowly increased for the first half hour or so started to 

fall off as expected from the above explanation. 

However, before we all go out and buy recycled milk bottles 

to strengthen our HDPE film and pipe, we must remember two 

things: 

a) Recyclate already has some of the antioxidant used up (two 

meltings if it’s been pelletized, one if flake). 

b) There is contamination inherent in reuse of scrap, and particles 

may act as stress concentrators, which lead to failure even 

if the base resin is still strong. What’s important here is fine 

filtration and selection of resins with good resistance to crack 

propagation. People who run pressure pipe will know what I 

mean, or if they don’t, they should. 

Q: Could you please comment on measuring thickness and 

feeding information back to the extruder to get uniform 

linear flow? 

AG: The surest way to stabilize linear flow is with a gear pump. 

It isn’t a 100% guarantee as changes can still be caused by 

puller variations or “hot-lips disease” (see box above), but it is 

good for ironing out the cyclical variation from surging or the 

more erratic changes due to feeding 

problems. 

Direct feedback to screw speed 

can be done from a thickness signal. 

If response isn’t fast enough, 

these devices can also feed forward, 

adjusting the puller, but the usefulness 

of this method depends on the 

elasticity/plasticity of the melt as it 

leaves the die. 

Q: We use an infrared sensor to 

measure melt temperature as the 

extrudate comes out of the die. What else can we use not 

only to monitor the melt temperature, but also to collect 

data for analysis? 

AG: Melt thermocouples work just like the metal-sensing thermocouples, 

but their tip is immersed in the melt (slides 24-27 

from the presentation). On the most useful ones you can adjust 

the probe depth, but these also are the least rugged and require 

added attention in use. Pay attention to where the probe 

is placed—it should be somewhere in the adapter after the 

screens. There is a temptation to combine it with the pressure 

gauge and put it into the hole at the screw tip. Pressure reading 

will still be OK, but temperature won’t be representative. 

It’s better than nothing, as you can still compare data, but you 

can’t trust their absolute values. 

Regarding data collection, check with the maker of the controllers 

as well as the extruder itself. There are a few specialized 

companies who can do this, too. 

Q: We produce HDPE profiles, and after a short time we 

begin to see material collecting on the die face that eventually 

drips off on the product, or makes a streak on the prod- 


“The rear barrel 

temperature is also 

the ‘aspirin’ of the 

troubleshooter—it’s what 

you change if you don’t really 

know what else to do.” 

Hot-lips disease (pulsing) 

If the end of a die is separately controlled by a conventional 

proportioning controller, it will be pulsed every 10 seconds or 

so, and this may give a thicker product when the heater is on 

(thinner for blown film). This is easily spotted if the thick areas 

are in time with the heater cycle. 

If heaters are very close to the die lips, such a variation is 

inevitable, and they must be controlled by a nonpulsing device 

(expensive) or a variable-resistance power source, preset and 

left that way with no control loop (most common). 

Circulating fluid will work, too, but is rare. One of the best 

alternates is insulation (attached by magnets or stainless 

steel Velcro), which keeps the head/die hotter, no cost and 

no pulsing. The best heater is a sweater. 

uct when it hangs up in the sizing device. We have had some 

success by lowering the temperatures in the extruder and 

the die face. Do you have any further suggestions? 

AG: This is a case of die drool or die deposits. There are three 

approaches: 

a) Use a processing aid that coats the inside of the die lands. 

This will not only reduce drool, but also reduce the chances of 

melt fracture at the surface when it 

is coming out very fast, and reduce 

backpressure so that melt temperature 

can be lower if that is desired. 

b) Direct a thin stream of air at the 

exit line, which will cool the skin 

and keep it from curling up and 

away from the mass of the melt. 

You can test it by mounting an air 

blower in a temporary position. 

c) Analyze the drool to see what 

it is. It could be an additive such 

as antioxidant, in which case you 

could change the antioxidant (not so easy as it comes with the 

resin) or run at a cooler temperature, which you already are 

doing. Slip agents and antistatics can do the same thing. It could 

also be a low-molecular-weight fraction of the resin (oligomers), 

which again requires resin change or cooler melt as remedy. 

Q: We currently produce several profiles with a TPO and we 

are having consistency problems with a TPO for profiles. We 

have contacted the supplier, but we have always been told, 

“everything is in spec.” What can we try at our end, and what 

questions should we be asking the supplier? 

AG: The unanswered question here is whether the supplier’s 

spec is really too wide a spec. Get the material spec sheet or 

find it in one of the online resin databases. For a TPO, they 

should at least have melt index (specify test conditions) and 

density, and probably tensile and heat-resistance data. It would 

be nice if they could guarantee a melt index with a ±5% variation 

and test every lot they send. This is a tight spec, and the 

supplier may either refuse or ask a higher price. 

This now becomes a purchasing issue rather than a technical 

one. Ask them what limits they will guarantee. You can also 


EXTRUSION 

Figure 2. A black mark around one of the four holes in the back 

of the screw can serve as a counting mark. 

test melt index on other materials to see if they are held more 

closely than this one. Other tests can be useful, too, but this is 

one of the easiest. It is also possible, of course, that something 

is changing in your plant, but unlikely that it would happen 

with this resin and no others. 

Q: What’s the best screw design for highly filled materials? 

AG: Screw design is a controversial topic, as so many people 

have different designs that they developed and promote. A lot 

depends on the extruder, as a long 

machine allows more to happen in 

the screw. A lot also depends on 

how much filler is “high,” and on 

whether you have fillers already 

dispersed in a compatible resin, or 

are adding them in powder form 

and need a lot more mixing. 

If I already have an extruder, I would avoid the question 

(and the need to buy a new screw) by trying the desired mixture 

on a system I have, selecting a line with some past history of 

good mixing if possible. I would also pay attention to: 

a) Power requirements: Fillers will increase viscosity and maybe 

get too close to maximum power available. Some remedies for 

that include running hotter feed and/or hotter barrel (less heat 

needed from the motor = less power draw, and even a hotter 

die might help if it didn’t overheat the melt and slow down 

production rate), or changing speed range with retrofit pulleys 

“People who run pressure pipe 

will know what I mean, or 

if they don’t, they should.” 

to get more power from the existing system. 

b) Mixing quality: Better dispersion may mean less filler needed 

to get desired properties. Water cooling of the screw, or installation 

of a static mixer after the screens, or special mixing breaker 

plates, or a tighter screen pack, or changing the carrier and loading 

level of a concentrate are all ways to improve mixing. 

If I can’t make adequate product from the existing system, 

the problems I encounter would indicate for me what I could 

do next. I can accept the idea of a new screw, but only if I 

clearly see why that screw would solve these problems, and 

what past experience that design had with high filler loadings. 

A computer simulation using viscosity data at extrusion shear 

rates (in the clearances as well as channels) would be helpful, 

too, and to me is essential for advance planning of large (hence 

expensive) screws. 

Q: How can you determine temperature offset due to shear? 

AG: Shear heating is the increase in a melt thermocouple reading 

because of the friction of the melt against the thermocouple, 

which can raise the displayed reading by as much as 10 deg C 

(18 deg F). Usually it is not as great, and usually it is ignored, as 

what matters most is the consistency in melt temperature, rather 

than the absolute value. However, where chemical reactions 

(foaming, cross-linking) are involved, or where the material is 

in serious danger of degradation, a more accurate reading of 

melt temperature is desired. This is done by measuring the rise 

at a given set of conditions (known resin, flow rate, and viscosity) 

and subtracting it from the displayed value. 

You can measure the rise by stopping the machine suddenly, 

and watching the melt temperature quickly drop to the real 

value as the shear heating stops suddenly, but the mass does 

not move and the thermocouple can record its true temperature 

at the point of measurement. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, 

because sudden stoppage requires management of what is 

coming out of the die at full speed (if it is slowed down before 

stopping, you won’t get a true reading of the shear heating). 

Further, it may be dangerous to start up again without bringing 

the screw speed down to zero 

and raising it as usual during a 

startup. Most modern machines 

have controls that prevent such a 

restart “in gear,” but it may have 

been disabled or not have been 

there in the first place. It may be 

most convenient to run this test at 

the end of a run, when you have to shut down anyway. 

Q: What is the value of flush-mounted thermocouples for 

measuring melt temperature? 

AG: Extruders don’t normally have flush-mounted melt thermocouples 

in the adapter or die. The only ones I’ve seen are the 

rather common and rather useless combination gauges, where 

a thermocouple is inside the pressure gauge at the screw tip. 

There was an infrared gauge sold 20-30 years ago (Vanzetti), 

but it quietly disappeared. 


The problem is usually PVC, where there is fear that material 

caught behind the probe will initiate degradation. That 

is technically possible, but most systems have other places 

where degradation is more likely—bends, long spaces after the 

breaker plate, and the like. If the probe is the main concern, 

you are doing a lot of other things right. I am more comfortable 

with knowing the melt temperature, even for PVC, and suggest 

a variable-depth device with minimal penetration in its “rest” 

position, but with the ability to be adjusted to move away from 

the wall and toward the center of the stream. 

You may be surprised at the variation from center to wall. 

There were two classic SPE papers written on this topic in the 

1980s; they discovered as much as 30 deg C (55 deg F) variation 

in some cases, and concluded that if there is as little as 6 deg C 

(10 deg F) variation, you’re doing very well. 

Indirect methods may be useful, too—an infrared sensor on 

the extrudate as it leaves the die, or manipulation of an adapter 

heater control to find the temperature that it just turns on and 

quickly off again. 

Q: Why do some extruders have screw cooling and others don’t? 

AG: Many extruder screws are bored for temperature control, 

but most of them don’t use this feature (see Figure 1, p. 34; slide 

28). Reasons for its use might be: 

a) to improve mixing in the screw. This works quite well, but 

also reduces the output per revolution from 5%-30%. This 

doesn’t mean less output; in fact, the improved mixing may 

allow faster production of good product than before. 

b) to control the very end of a single screw running rigid PVC, 

to keep it below degradation point and thus perhaps allow faster 

operation or a longer time between shutdowns. In this case, the 

medium is not water, but heat transfer oil, so that temperatures 

of 150°C can be reached without high pressure. 

c) to avoid sticking to the screw root with certain plastics that 

are susceptible to this problem, such as flake PET. In such a case, 

we need only cool the first third of the screw. For (a) and (b) we 

need to control all the way to the end. 

Some twin-screws also have hollow screws that transfer heat 

back from the output end to the feed end, or take it out entirely 

via a heat exchanger. The result is a possible faster screw speed 

without excessive heat and consequent degradation. 

Want the slides? Downloading them 

is simple 

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EXTRUSION 

Q: You mentioned a black mark on the back of a screw. What 

is it there for? 

AG: A black mark is put there to make it easier to count rpm, 

to make sure the rpm display is working OK, and to get rpm 

in case it isn’t. 

In Figure 2 (p. 36, slide 13), there is such a black area around 

one of the four holes in the back of the screw. This could serve 

as a counting mark, but it should really be sharper and darker 

to be more distinct, especially if the screw is turning fast. 

I didn’t mention the four holes, as they didn’t relate to my topic 

of numbers, but they are important, too—they are the place where 

the screw pusher is fixed. Not all screws have this feature, but it is 

quite useful to help push out the screw with minimal damage. 

Another image showing the rear of the extruder is Figure 1, 

with the screw-cooling fitting. There may be a mark on that screw 

as well, but it can’t be seen. It wasn’t necessary on this machine, as 

the fitting wobbled back and forth with each revolution and was 

easy to see. (That’s not a good thing, as it stresses the connections; 

a proper installation would have the fittings immobilized in a way 

that allows rotation but no lateral movement.) 

Q: Most of this information can be used for extrusion 

blowmolding, can’t it? 

AG: That’s quite true. Extrusion blowmolding (EBM) is fed 

by extruders, and the same needs apply—especially to wheel 

systems, which are basically pipe extruders with a specialized 

takeoff. There are more numbers to be gotten, of course, in 

addition to the ones I mentioned, such as blowing air and 

details of parison programming and mold cooling, but this 

is like any other extrusion (film, sheet, etc.) with specialized 

needs for the cooling phase of the operation. 

There is an interesting “marriage” of these processes— 

twin-sheet thermoforming of hollow objects. This was done 

more than 50 years ago with collapsible cubical containers 

used for battery fluids, then used for hollow cases for tools 

with a smooth outside and formed “nests” inside, and even 

automotive gas tanks, using multilayer sheets. 

Q: Who are the best providers of computerized data acquisition 

systems for extrusion? 

AG: Most extruder and controller makers will help their customers, 

and sometimes will help others that don’t yet have 

their equipment but are good prospects for sales. The missing 

link is the person on the plant floor to inventory what there 

is and how well it is working, and eventually do the actual 

wiring from the instruments to the processor. This should 

preferably be people from your own factory, as they need 

someone to understand what is being done. Plus, if an outside 

source does all the wiring and goes away, who do you call 

when things go wrong? 

I do know some companies and individuals who might 

do such a service and remain on call for problems, but can’t 

express such preferences in public, to maintain my position 

of independence. With private clients, we have a relation of 

mutual confidence and I can tell it more like it is. MPW 


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WORLD TOUR 

ASIA-PACIFIC 

Business, Strategies & Markets 

Chinaplas preview: The way 

forward for the world’s second-largest 

economy 

By Stephen Moore 

The timing of China’s jump in the global 

GDP rankings, as well as Chinaplas, 

is particularly auspicious given 

the Mainland’s latest showpiece—Expo 

2010 Shanghai—will kick off about one 

week after Chinaplas concludes. Most 

indications are that it will be another 

landmark year for the economic titan in 

the global arena. 

Observers don’t expect China’s surge 

forward to cease any time soon. Already 

the largest auto market in the world and 

the leading manufacturer in a multitude 

of market segments that extensively 

employ plastics, from air-conditioners 

through to Yuletide decorations, China 

could overtake the United States to 

become the world’s largest economy as 

early as 2020, according to consultancy 

PricewaterhouseCoopers. 

China is part of a larger economic 

grouping dubbed the E-7, or the 

Emerging Seven group of developing 

economies—China, India, Brazil, Russia, 

Mexico, Indonesia, and Turkey—that 

is forecast to match the economic output 

of the developed G7 nations—the 

The skinny on 

Chinaplas 

Where: Shanghai New International 

Expo Centre, Pudong, China 

When: April 19-22, 2010 

Total exhibition area: 145,000m 2 

(est.) 

No. of exhibitors: ~1900 

No. of visitors: 75,000 (est.) 

As Chinaplas opens in Shanghai this April, China will more than likely be 

celebrating its impending emergence as the world’s second-largest economy 

after the United States, expecting to have edged slightly ahead of Japan when 

the fi nal 2009 GDP numbers come in. 

The latest edition of Chinaplas will be bigger than ever, hosting 

around 1900 exhibitors in all, according to organizer Adsale. 

U.S., Japan, Germany, France, UK, Italy, 

and Canada—by 2019 and be about 

30% larger by 2030. Indeed, the next 

20 years is set to experience a global 

transformation that will redefine trade, 

manufacturing, and consumer demand, 

with major implications for the plastics 

processing sector. 

So what will China’s role be going 

forward and can we expect any changes 

to the rules of business? The Mainland’s 

socialist market economy policies will 

continue to promote economic growth 

and privatization within the realm of 

Communist rule, with its leaders facing a 

challenging balancing act of keeping the 

populace content and income disparities 

in check, while maintaining the status 

quo of power and control. 

Green tech boom 

China appears to have recognized that 

one key to stable long-term growth is 

looking after its environment and the 

health of its citizens, and efforts are 

being made to ensure this. Universal 

access to essential healthcare for all in 

China has been targeted by 2020, for 

example (November 2009 MPW, p. 44). 

And while some Chinese manufacturers 

have created some Great Wall-sized PR 

nightmares in recent years (recall the 

use of outlawed additives in plastic toys 

or poison in dog food), the government 

continues to drive progress forward in 

other areas directly impacting the health 

of its citizens. Take the recent regulations 

governing “Hygienic Standard for Uses 

of Additives in Food Containers and 

Packaging Materials,” for example, that 

prescribe a positive list of additives that 

can be used in packaging and their upper 

limits, primarily based on similar legislation 

in the United States, the European 


WORLD TOUR 

Union, and Japan. 

Furthermore, China insists it is doing 

its fair share in combating global warming, 

despite the controversy surrounding 

the Copenhagen climate summit. Having 

amended its Renewable Energy Law 

in December 2009, albeit only slightly, 

and raised its target for wind, solar, 

and hydropower contribution to overall 

electricity generation to 20% by 2020, 

China is also setting targets for production 

of green vehicles. “Fuel-efficient 

and new energy vehicles should account 

for 10% of the total vehicle industry in 

2012,” said China’s Science and Technology 

Minister, Wan Gang, with optimism 

in 2008. 

While the global recession and the 

pace of technological development may 

have postponed the target date, “More 

than 30 Chinese automakers have invested 

in R&D of cars fueled by alternative 

energy or electricity,” according to 

Qiang Lu, professor at the State Key Lab 

of Power Systems at Tsinghua University. 

China manufactured about 10.8 million 

vehicles in 2009, far ahead of secondranked 

Japan at less than 7.6 million 

and the U.S. at 5.6 million. The Mainland’s 

green aspirations would indicate 

that it continues to play a major part in 

the global auto industry even if there is a 

paradigm shift in auto technology. 

Labor law and lending 

The Chinese government is also attempting 

to improve the lot of workers through 

enactment of its Labour Contract Law 

in January 2008, 

but as with other 

legislation, having 

laws in place is one 

thing; enforcing 

them is an entirely 

different issue. 

Often the onus 

falls on the multinationalcorporations 

to encourage 

compliance from their suppliers on the 

Mainland. 

Computer and IT brand owner 

Apple’s Supplier Responsibility report 

of February 2009 noted that 42% of its 

suppliers recorded frequent violations of 


China could overtake the 

United States to become 

the world’s largest 

economy as early as 2020, 

according to consultancy 

PricewaterhouseCoopers. 

ASIA-PACIFIC 


Exhibitors will once again be anticipating extensive buying activity at Chinaplas 2010. 

“work hours and days of rest” in 2008, 

with 27% recording frequent violations 

of wages and benefits. The Apple Supplier 

Code of Conduct sets a maximum 

of 60 work hours per week and requires 

at least one day of rest per seven-day 

week under normal work conditions. 

At 40 of the 83 facilities it audited, the 

records reviewed indicated that workers 

had exceeded weekly work-hour limits 

more than 50% of the time. At 23 facilities, 

auditors found that workers had 

been paid less than minimum wage for 

regular working hours. 

While observers note that the Labour 

Contract Law goes some way to providing 

workers with limited 

contractual protection, 

it remains 

largely unenforceable 

since many of 

the workers manning 

China’s manufacturing 

facilities 

in southern and 

eastern China are 

unofficial migrants 

who are unable to exercise their newly 

given employment rights. Those same 

observers predict that the law will largely 

benefit white collar workers, helping them 

to sue their foreign employers if dismissed 

unfairly, but will do little to improve the 

lot of factory workers. Going forward, 

therefore, the multinational corporations 

such as Apple are most likely to be the 

main drivers in improving standards for 

Chinese workers. 

While they still may enjoy attractive 

labor costs, this year, at least, processors 

might find it harder to access the funding 

to expand their operations if recent lending 

practices are any indication. Partly 

fueled by government stimulus packages, 

a record 9.59 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) 

of new loans were doled out in 2009 in 

China, stoking concerns of asset bubbles 

and worsening credit quality. Liu Mingkang, 

chairman of the China Banking 

Regulatory Commission, has been quoted 

as saying the lending target for 2010 

will be 22% lower than in 2009, at 7.5 

trillion yuan ($1.1 trillion). Banks will 

thus be forced to be more circumspect in 

projects they choose to fund. 

Circumspect, however, does not mean 

an automatic “no” will be stamped on 

loan submissions. Still, the days of easy 

money appear to have stopped, if only 

temporarily. Fortunately for plastics processors 

and their customers, the Chinese 

government clearly has been supportive 

of light and heavy manufacturing, so the 

odds are that plastics processors’ opportunities 

in this vast country are going to 

continue increasing. MPW 


WORLD TOUR 

NORTH AMERICA 


Twin-sheet thermoformed TPU 

deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan 

By Tony Deligio A technology initially developed to absorb impact in running shoes now 

How much protection? During an 

interview with Mike Buchen, president 

and CEO of Skydex, at its Centennial, 

CO headquarters, he covered one 

hand with the company’s new thermoplastic 

polyurethane (TPU) sheet padding 

and used the other to repeatedly slam a 

ballistic helmet into the material. This 

reporter was convinced. 

The key to its innovation is what Skydex 

calls twin hemispheres. Supplied in 

sheet form, the product is made by forming 

small cups, or hemispheres, in a TPU 

sheet, and then joining two still-warm 

sheets of the structures in a twin-sheet 

thermoforming process, so that the cups 

are bonded together, bottom to bottom, 

to form an hourglass shape. 

By changing the hemisphere’s composition, 

thickness, and spacing, Skydex can 

tune them to a specific function, with current 

applications covering blast limiting, 

cushioning, impact mitigation, vibration 

absorption, and sound dampening. The 

product 

also uses 

various 

protects soldiers, seeing use in everything from helmets and kneepads to 

blast-limiting sheets and seat cushions, with development of ballistic grades 

for vests currently under way. 

additive packages to boost functionality 

and performance in the field, including 

the addition of flame-retardant, anti-mildew, 

anti-fungus, and anti-static systems. 

At the company’s headquarters, 

Buchen and Peter Foley, chief technology 

officer, walked through the numerous 

applications the unique geometry has 

found a niche in, pulling product samples 

off the wall of their conference room, 

and occasionally demonstrating 

their effectiveness. With 

the ability to target 

foam currently used 

for cushioning and 

protection, the 

potential volume 

of applications 

for the technology 

seems limitless, 

but Foley 

said Skydex has main- 

Skydex’s twin hemispheres, created by twin-sheet 

thermoforming TPU sheet, have been put to use in 

everything from knee and helmet pads to blast-limiting 

panels for military vehicles. 

tained strict focus in the products it 

targets. 

“We’re not packaging foam,” Foley 

explains. “We have to protect things that 

matter, because if it’s something that can 

be broken and replaced, you’re probably 

going to protect it with polystyrene or 

something like that. For now, there are 

so many different ways we can tune this 

to protect brains and limbs, that that’s 

really the focus.” 

Part of that immediate winnowing 

of development is blast-limiting panels 

that will be included in more than 6000 

military vehicles headed to Iraq and 

Afghanistan. Force Protection’s Cougar 

and Buffalo vehicles, as well as Oshkosh’s 

M-ATV, will feature large sheets, 

up to 60 by 90 inches, to help mitigate 

the impact caused by improvised explosive 

devices (IEDs). 

Using independent studies, Skydex 


WORLD TOUR 

determined that its protective material 

reduces blast force transmitted through 

the floor by 71%. Those results were for 

vehicles headed to Afghanistan, where 

roadside bombs cause 75% of the casualties 

to coalition forces, and more than 

50% of the troops will be exposed to a 

blast wave in one form or a another. 

“We really started focusing on the 

military in 2004,” Foley says, “and reengineered 

the technology from dealing 

with the impact of a foot hitting the 

ground, which is a very known thing, to 

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ing brains from overpressure, shockwaves, 

IEDs.” 

Building better helmet padding 

Before it was placed on the floors and 

walls of the next generation of vehicles 

to be deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, 

Skydex’s first tour came in ballistic helmets, 

replacing leather headbands. The 

older-generation PASGT system, which 

used leather or Kevlar to hold a helmet 

on, had proven uncomfortable, and the 

next-generation foam pads failed to perform 

under all the conditions soldiers 

can face. Buchen recalls a sales 

call in which, after storing the 

foam pads in a small cooler so 

they came down to 35-40°F, 

he broke them in half at a 

National Guard base. Because 

of this lack of low-temperature 

performance, troops were 

instructed to remove the pads 

from their helmet at night in 

cold environs and store them in 

a warm place. 

After adopting 

Skydex’s twin hemispheres, the 

Army has more than doubled the impact 

standards for its helmet pads because 

of their properties, taking them from 

absorbing 10 ft/sec of impact velocity to 

now striving for 17 ft/sec. 

A duty to their customers 

The choice to protect soldiers in the 

field as opposed to flat-screen TVs during 

shipping has had numerous impacts 

on Skydex, including how it deals with 

certain customers. “We are committed 

to protecting things that matter and in 

this business, I don’t know of anything 

that matters more than the safety of 

our men and women in uniform,” says 

Buchen. MPW 

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COUNTDOWNTOK 

The K is, without question, the most 

international of this industry’s trade 

shows, but it is not surprising that about 

40% of the event’s visitors come from 

Germany’s strong plastics processing 

industry. Processors there naturally have 

felt the blows of the recession of the 

past 18 months, but the country’s strong 

automotive and plastics supply industries, 

combined with its leading position 

among plastics processing machinery 

manufacturers, have helped processors 

weather the storm either via demand 

(automotive) or via their R&D efforts 

(the materials and machinery suppliers). 

According to a recent survey of plastics 

processors in the country by local language 

publication Kunststoff Information, 

revenue growth and orders in the second 

half of 2009 were well above processors’ 

expectations, and the trend is expected to 

continue at least through the first half of 

this year. A majority even expects the trend 

to transition from the current “getting better 

finally” stage to a solid improved market 

by mid-year, with demand returning to 

pre-recession levels in 2011. 

According to the survey organizers, 

larger processors employing more than 

500 were in especially good spirits as the 

latter half of last year closed on a high note 

for these important players, many of them 

likely serving automotive customers. 

An improvement doesn’t yet mean 

money is burning holes in anyone’s pockets. 

Some 28% of the survey’s participants 

did plan to increase their company’s 

PMI 

60 

50 

40 

30 

Timing looks good: Domestic 

market turns the corner . . . 

02/09 03/09 04/09 05/09 06/09 07/09 08/09 09/09 10/09 11/09 12/09 01/10 

Spirits are up, but not everyone is ready to buy. 

7 months 

This alt’s for you 

For many visitors to the country, a visit to 

Germany would not be complete without a 

taste of the country’s most famous beverage, 

its beer. In Düsseldorf, home to the K 

show, if you ask for beer, you’ll be served an 

Altbier, or Alt. Although there has been some 

consolidation in the local industry, several 

large Alt brewers remain, led by Diebels, 

Make way! 

Frankenheim, Hannen, and Schlösser. 

The brew, which is maple in color and mild in fl avor, has an alcohol content from 

4%-5% and is created using top-fermenting yeast. This style dates back to the earliest 

beers brewed in open casks before the development of bottom-fermenting beers, which 

produce lighter-colored lagers. Altbier literally means “old beer,” a reference to the archaic 

top-fermentation method employed, and until the 1950s it was also known as Düssel for 

Düsseldorf, although that demarcation has faded from use. 

Düsseldorf’s Old Town includes three restaurants that have their own Alt breweries on 

the premises: Zum Uerige, Im Füchschen, and Zum Schlüssel. During the K show, and 

especially if the weather is anything but miserable, crowds gather inside and outside these 

and order rounds of the small (0.2-liter) glass of the local specialty. See you there. 

capital investment this year as compared 

to 2009, while 49% plan to leave their 

capital investment levels unchanged and 

23% will lower the amount invested. 

. . . and so does the U.S. 

The economic recovery is in full swing. 

That’s the pronouncement as a result of 

the latest manufacturing business survey 

from the Institute for Supply Management 

(ISM). The ISM’s manufacturing index 

rose to 58.4% in January, interpreted as 

a signal that the economic recovery is fact, 

not fiction. New orders, employment, 

and production all were growing, and 

inventories were 

contracting, with 

customers’ inventories 

labeled “too 

low.” 

“The manufac- 

The ISM’s PMI index climbs 

as manufacturing improves. 

turing sector grew 

for the sixth consecutive 

month in 

January as the Purchasing 

Managers 

Index (PMI) rose to 58.4%, its highest 

reading since August 2004, when it registered 

58.5%,” said Norbert Ore, chair 

of ISM’s Manufacturing Business Survey 

Committee. “This month’s report provides 

significant assurance that the manufacturing 

sector is in recovery.” Both 

New Orders and Production Indexes were 

above 60%, indicating strong current and 

future performance for manufacturing. 

Thirteen of the 18 industries included 

reported growth, and “plastics and rubber 

products” made the list of 13 industries 

reporting improved performance. 

Another recent survey, the Original 

Equipment Suppliers Assn.’s Supplier 

Barometer, indicated that supplier sentiment 

is “solidly optimistic about the next 

12 months.” Some 75% of the respondents 

noted they were “somewhat more” 

optimistic than they were two months 

ago, with optimism stemming from an 

improved automotive industry, demand 

growth in other industries, and the fact 

that cost-cutting has lowered many companies’ 

breakeven point significantly. MPW 


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CNC Diamond Turn/Mill – 42” OD x 177” 

Email: GJ@JacoTech.com /www.JacoTech.com 

Phone: 630-467-0900 / Fax: 630-467-0901 

105 E. Irving Park Rd. Itasca, Illinois 60143 USA 

WWW.TIMBERLINEMACHINERY.COM 

$2,000,000 Inventory 

Injection Molders 

Blow Molders 

Extruders 

Call Ed Makepeace 

Ph: 603-889-7233 (USA) tmi@timberlinemachinery.com 

Fax: 603-889-7300 (USA) 100 MACHINES IN STOCK 

Buying and Selling Quality, 

Used Plastics Machinery 

www.hunterplastics.com 

100 Pratts Junction Rd., Sterling, MA 01564 

Ph: 978-422-8222 

Fax: 978-422-8223 

Having an Auction? 

Place your auction information on our 

website and promote your auction instantly! 

We also offer e-weekly newsletters going to 

25,000 inboxes globally. Usually we can get 

your ad up on our web site within 24 hours. 

Contact: Cheryl Ackerman 


Phone: 516 496 8891 

Modern Plastics Worldwide 

Classified Advertising 

Are you looking to get 

worldwide recognition and 

exposure for your company? 

A small ad in Modern Plastics reaches 

over 

60,000 

qualified readers of the print 

version around the world. 

Our digital subscribers top over 

20,000. 

We give you the best bang for your 

buck. 

In these hard economic times you 

need to make sure that every 

dollar counts. 

Contact: Cheryl Ackerman 


516 496 8891 


CALENDAR OF EVENTS 

MARCH 

5-9 Taipei Plas, Taipei, Taiwan 

Taiwan External Trade Development Council 

+866 2-2725-5200 

www.taipeiplas.com.tw 

8-10 Global Plastics Environmental Conference (GPEC) 2010 

Orlando, FL 

Society of Plastics Engineers | +1 203-740-5452 

www.4spe.org 

8-10 Polymer Nanocomposites, Bethlehem, PA 


www.4spe.org 

8-10 Plastics Modification via Additives, Compounding & Coatings 

Atlanta, GA 

InnoPlast Solutions | +1 973-446-9531 

www.innoplastsolutions.com 

9-11 Sino-Pack 2010/China Drinktec 2010, Guangzhou, China 

Adsale Exhibition Services Ltd. | +852 2516 3381 

www.2456.com/sino-pack 

14-16 International Home & Housewares Show 2010, Chicago, IL 

International Housewares Assn. | +1 847-692-0100 

www.housewares.org 

16-17 PRIM Golden Jubilee International Polymer Conference 

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 

The Plastics & Rubber Institute Malaysia (PRIM) 

+603 7847-1034 

www.prim.org.my/goldenjubilee 

18-20 Plastics & Rubber Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 

Bangkok Exhibition Services Ltd. | +66 2615-1255 

www.plasticsvietnam.com 

22-26 Argenplás 2010, Bueno Aires, Argentina 

Reed Exhibitions | +54 11-4343-7020 

www.argenplas.com.ar 

23-25 Medtec Europe, Stuttgart, Germany 

Canon Communications LLC | +49 69-2222-3115 

www.medteceurope.com 

23-25 Westec 2010, Los Angeles, CA 

Society of Manufacturing Engineers | +1 800-733-4763 

www.westeconline.com 

23-25 Polyolefin Additives 2010, Cologne, Germany 

Applied Market Information Ltd. | +44 117-924-9442 

www2.amiplastics.com/Events 

25 The ABCs of IML—A Basic Course, Skokie, IL 

RBS Technologies Inc. | +1 480-473-0301 

www.rbstechnologies.com 

30-Apr 3 Koplas 2010, Goyang-si, Korea 

Korea E & Ex Inc. | +82 2-551-0102 

www.koplas.com 

APRIL 

6-7 SPE Thermoset TopCon, Chicago, IL 


www.4spe.org 

6-9 PlastShow 2010, São Paolo, Brazil 

Aranda Eventos | +55 11-3824-5300 

www.arandanet.com.br 

12-14 Molding 2010, San Antonio, TX 

Executive Conference Management Inc. | +1 734-737-0507 

www.executive-conference.com 

19-22 Chinaplas 2010, Shanghai, China 

Adsale Exhibition Services Ltd. | +852 2516-3374 

www.chinaplasonline.com 

21-22 Design & Manufacturing New England, BIOMEDevice, 

Electronics New England, Boston, MA 


www.dm-newengland.com 

26-28 Emerging Trends in Plastics Packaging, Atlanta, GA 

InnoPlast Solutions | +1 973-446-9531 

www.innoplastsolutions.com 

28-29 Plastec South, AM Expo/ATX South, Design & Manufacturing 

South, Green Manufacturing Expo, SouthPack, 

Quality Expo South, Charlotte, NC 


www.plastecsouth.com 


Seminars, symposiums, webinars—there’s more at 

plasticstoday.com/mpw. Just click on Events. 


ADVERTISER INDEX 

COMPANY PAGE 

Adsale Exhibition Services Ltd. 37 

Alpha Marathon 13 

Arburg GmbH + Co. KG BC 

Avian Machinery Co. 39 

Borouge Pte. Ltd. 40, 41 

Canon Communications Trade Events 20 

Dalton Electric Heating 21 

Dynisco Instruments 9 

En Chuan Chemical Industries Co. Ltd. 26, 31 

Erema Plastic Recycling Systems 11 

Fong Kee International Machinery Co. Ltd. 10 

Gabriel-Chemie Group 12 

Hans Weber Maschinenfabrik GmbH 6A 

Jenn Chong Plastics Machinery Works Co. Ltd. 24 

Korea E+EX Inc. 27 

Lindauer Dornier GmbH IBC 

Maag Pump Systems Textron AG 45 

Messe Düsseldorf North America 16, 38 

Processing Technologies Inc. 25 

Rapid Granulator Inc. IFC 

Rocklin Mfg. Co. 21 

Technovel Corp. 19 

Teijin Chemicals Ltd. 23 

Tinius Olsen 24 

Vortex Valves North America 13 

Zambello Riduttori Group 17 

MODERN PLASTICS WORLDWIDE 

UPCOMING DIRECTORIES 

BIOPLASTICS & SUSTAINABILITY 

April 2010 

Contact Iris Topel 

Tel: +1 718-478-8104 

Fax: +1 718-478-8105 

iris.topel@cancom.com 

MODERN PLASTICS WORLDWIDE (ISSN 0026-8275) is published monthly, except for February, May, July, 

and December, by Canon Communications LLC, 11444 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90064-1549. 

Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post International 

Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement No. 40612608. Canada Post return address: BleuChip 

International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. 

Modern Plastics Worldwide has no connection with any company of similar name. The name “Modern Plastics” 

is registered with the U.S. Patent Office. ©2010 Canon Communications LLC. All rights reserved. Printed in 

the USA. Copying for other than personal or internal reference use without the express permission of Canon 

Communications LLC is prohibited. Requests for special permission, or bulk orders should be addressed to 

the publisher. 

SUBSCRIPTIONS: Please send all circulation correspondence, subscription orders, and change of address 

notices to Modern Plastics Worldwide, P.O. Box 3568, Northbrook, IL 60065 USA. For subscriber service 

call +1 847-559-7590, fax +1 847-291-4816, or e-mail mpw@omeda.com. Basic subscription price in the 

USA and possessions is 1 year $59.00, 2 years $99.00, 3 years $139.00. Canada is 1 year $110.00, 2 years 

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SPOTLIGHT 

ON MEDRON INC. 

Medical maven 

When Ron Wortley arrived in Salt 

Lake City, UT in 1973 to found medical 

supplier Vital Assist, the region was 

already becoming a hotbed for medical 

devices. Six years prior, Willem 

Johan Kolff, inventor of the artifi cial 

kidney and considered the father of 

artifi cial organs, became the head of 

the University of Utah’s Div. of Artifi - 

cial Organs and Institute for Biomedical 

Engineering, helping make the Salt 

Lake Valley a top destination for medical 

technology development. 

At one time a pre-med student, Wortley 

started up two medical device suppliers 

in the intervening years since his 

arrival in Utah nearly 40 years ago. 

In 1981, he began a company called 

Med-West, which was eventually sold to 

Kendall Healthcare (later Tyco) in 1988. 

After satisfying a five-year noncompete 

clause, Wortley then launched his current 

business, Medron Inc., in 1994. 

Innovation and specialization in the 

field of vascular catheters have helped 

the supplier enjoy steady growth—a pace 

of healthy expansion that suits Wortley 

just fine. Asked how his company has 

maintained positive business, Wortley 

jokes, “Always be profitable,” before 

adding, “I’ve never believed in growth 

just for growth’s sake. What we do is 

predicated on whether or not we can do 

it well and make money at it.” 

Eric King, VP 

product development, 

boils down 

the company’s success to a simple tenet: 

“Take on the products that make sense, 

and the ones we want to work on as 

well. That’s almost a luxury we have.” 

Saying the company moved away 

from “piecemeal” work a long time ago 

and became more selective in its partnerships, 

Wortley explains that today, 

“[Medron] will look at anything that’s 

profitable and a good fit for both companies, 

as long as it’s medical.” 

After starting out in a 4000-ft 2 space, 

the company now operates from a 

14,000-ft 2 facility, staffed by approximately 

120 employees working two 

shifts, five days/week. Of Medron’s 19 

injection molding machines, which are a 

mix of vertical and horizontal systems, 

two are equipped for silicone molding, 

with presses from Lawton, Boy, 

Engel, Autojectors, and Illinois Precision. 

Around 2000, the company considered 

adding extrusion to its capabilities, but 

decided instead to invest in liquid silicone 

rubber (LSR) molding. 

As stalwart plastics processing markets 

such as automotive and even packaging 

struggle, a great deal of attention 

has been given to the medical segment 

and its perceived imperviousness to economic 

downturns. Wortley has heard 

many of the accepted truths about the 

segment he serves, and sees some elements 

of truth as well as misperceptions. 

Salt Lake City, UT 

Innovation, attention to detail, and 

specialization have fueled sustainable 

growth for medical molder Medron Inc., 

helping it stand out in a region with a 

burgeoning medical manufacturing base. 

Asked whether cost is in fact not king 

in medical, while it reigns in other segments, 

Wortley says, “[Cost] obviously 

comes up, but it’s not a major driver. If 

we were more in the commodity area, 

I’m sure we’d be hard pressed all the 

time. These products, for the most part, 

are not easy to make and that gives us an 

advantage in the pricing area.” 

And higher margins too, right? 

“There’s a reason for [higher margins 

in medical],” explains Dave Wortley, 

VP manufacturing. “With the regulatory 

issues that you have to conform to, 

building the product is just 50% of the 

story. That’s why there appears to be 

a higher markup, but you’ve definitely 

paid the price with conforming to regulatory 

requirements.” 

Medical is insulated from offshore 

competition? “Part true, partly not true,” 

says Ron Wortley. “A lot of companies 

have the goal to try to transfer to a supposedly 

lower-cost manufacturing locale, 

such as Mexico or Puerto Rico, so that is 

part of what we deal with,” adding that 

many that do go overseas, do so through 

a wholly owned foreign subsidiary. 

Regardless of the market a processor 

serves, success typically boils down to a 

very simple concept, according to Ron. 

“No matter what market niche you’re in, 

if you do a better job against a majority of 

the companies you’re dealing with, then 

the market is probably there.” MPW 

Tony Deligio • tony.deligio@cancom.com 


See us at Chinaplas 2010, Hall E1, booth B01

Chinaplas 2010 

April 19-22, 2010 

Hall E1, Booth # E1G21 

Shanghai, P.R. China 

High-quality: automatic 

clamping force control 

High performance. The new ALLROUNDER H machines. Perfect for energy-efficient, 

cycle-time optimised thermoplastics processing. Clamping units with servo-electric precision. Injection 

units with dynamic accumulator technology for increased hydraulic performance. HIDRIVE: Powerful 

hybrid machines at an extremely attractive price. Made by ARBURG - Made in Germany. 

ARBURG GmbH + Co KG 

Postfach 11 09 · 72286 Lossburg /Germany 

Tel.: +49 (0) 74 46 33-0 

Fax: +49 (0) 74 46 33 33 65 

e-mail: contact@arburg.com 

Productive: innovative 

drive concept 

Fast: servo-electric clam - 

ping unit 

energy-efficient 

| (BR) Brasil: ARBURG Ltda. · Tel.: +55 (11) 5643 7007 · brasil@arburg.com | (CN) China: ARBURG (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. · Tel.: +86 (0) 21 5488 8866 · shanghai@arburg.com | 

ARBURG Machine & Trading (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. · Tel.: +86 (0) 755 8343 3750 · shenzhen@arburg.com | (HK) Hong Kong: ARBURG (HK) Ltd. · Tel.: +852 (2) 886 3007 · 

hongkong@arburg.com | (MX) Mexico: ARBURG S.A. de C.V. · Tel.: +52 55 5363 7520 · mexico@arburg.com | (MY) ARBURG Sdn Bhd · Tel.: +60 (0) 3 5636 6213 · 

malaysia@arburg.com | (SG) Singapore: ARBURG PTE LTD. · Tel.: +65 6778 8318 · singapore@arburg.com | (US) USA: ARBURG, Inc. · Tel.: +1 (860) 667 6500 · 

usa@arburg.com | 

www.arburg.com

Modern Plastics Worldwide - March 2010 - dae uptlax

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