Machinery News

Piping technology from Cincinnati

At Cincinnati Extrusion’s two-day open house recently, six extrusion lines were shown, two of which manufactured five-layer plastic-aluminium composite pipes, which are used for underfloor heating systems because of their easy laying properties.

A line displayed, in cooperation with Nexans, had four extruders: two Talos 60-30 G models with screws optimised for PEX and two co-extruders. Featuring TIG butt welding and a speed of 40 m/minute, the line was processing a PEX-b resin, which was supplied by Solvay Pedanaplast, to produce a 16 mm pipe with a wall thickness of 2 mm. Meanwhile, the second line was an entry-level machine. This easy-to-operate and relatively short line, developed in cooperation with Maintools, works with overlapping ultrasound welding of the aluminium layer. It reached an output of 25 m/minute for the same pipe dimensions as described above, with two Talos 45-30 G single-screw extruders producing the inner and outer layers from PE-RT resin supplied by Dow Chemical, and two co-extruders producing the adhesive bonding.

Also jointly with Maintools, the extruder manufacturer showed a new solution for the production of irrigation systems in a twin-strand process. The irrigation tape manufactured with an output of 60 kg/hour and a line speed of 40 m/minute comes with a sophisticated flow channel system that feeds to the plants 250 ml of water/m within ten minutes. A PP resin from Sabic was processed on a Talos 60-30G.

The highlight at the open house was the KryoSys system for the production of PO pipes. Here, the length of the cooling section can be reduced by more than 50% or, if left unchanged, output can be doubled. Boasting an output of 1,000 kg/hour, in the production of a 400 SDR 11 pipe from PE100 supplied by Sabic, KryoSys is a combination of the new Iris 40KryoS spiral mandrel pipe die with a melt cooling device and a special internal pipe cooling system. This system was demonstrated in combination with a Rapidex high-speed extruder.

Another line, developed jointly with LK-Pex, showed an innovative process, which is said to be better than the Ramm process in the production of PEX-a pipes. It reached an output of up to 120 kg/hour with a pipe diameter of 63 mm on a Konos 63 conical twin-screw extruder and a special pipe die. Borealis supplied the PEX resin, a peroxide crosslinked with the help of an integrated horizontal infrared dryer.

High-speed dimensional changes in pipe extrusion were also showcased. With the IntelliChange system, developed with components from Inoex, a low-cost solution has been made available to processors, to reduce their costs and inventory. The production of a two-layer PE pipe was shown with dimensional change between 63 and 160 mm. The PE100 resin from Borealis was plasticised by a Talos 75-30G extruder and combined with an Alpha 45-30G co-extruder to reach an output of 300 kg/hour.