Total technology solutions for plastics processing

At this year’s Chi­naplas (April 24–27, 2018: Nation­al Exhi­bi­tion and Con­ven­tion Cen­ter (Shang­hai), Hongqiao, Shang­hai, P.R. Chi­na) Cope­ri­on GmbH, Stuttgart, Ger­many, presents itself as a total tech­nol­o­gy solu­tion provider for all plas­tics pro­cess­ing appli­ca­tions. In addi­tion to a new com­pound­ing line con­cept espe­cial­ly devel­oped for the Chi­nese mar­ket the com­pa­ny will present twin screw extrud­ers ZSK 58 Mc¹⁸ and STS 35 Mc¹¹ and its SP trea­sure strand pel­letiz­er on its booth 2J83 in Hall 2H. Also on dis­play are a high­ly accu­rate K‑Tron quick change twin screw feed­er out­fit­ted with Act­i­Flow bulk solids acti­va­tor, Elec­tron­ic Pres­sure Com­pen­sa­tion (EPC) and 2415 Vac­u­um Receiv­er for refill as well as the unique K‑ML-BSP-150‑S Bulk Solids Pump (BSP) feed­er for gran­u­lar mate­ri­als, Coperion’s dual chan­nel divert­er valve WZKC for pow­ders and gran­u­lar prod­ucts and a CRD rotary valve.

Twin screw extruders ZSK 58 Mc¹⁸ and STS 35 Mc¹¹

As a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of its high-end ZSK twin screw extrud­er series, the com­pa­ny will exhib­it a ZSK 58 Mc¹⁸ extrud­er with 58 mm screw diam­e­ter at this year’s Chi­naplas. It is a high-qual­i­ty, local­ly assem­bled ZSK Mc¹⁸ extrud­er mod­el that is exclu­sive­ly avail­able for the Chi­nese mar­ket. The ZSK 58 Mc¹⁸ will be on dis­play out­fit­ted with high­ly accu­rate K‑Tron feed­ers: a K‑ML-SFS-KT20 Com­pact Twin Screw Feed­er for high accu­ra­cy at low feed rates and a K2-ML-D5-S60 Sin­gle Screw Feed­er for free flow­ing pel­lets or powders.
Also on dis­play is a STS 35 Mc¹¹ extrud­er fea­tur­ing a spe­cif­ic torque of 11.3 Nm/cm³, screw speeds of up to 900 rpm and proven Cope­ri­on extrud­er qual­i­ty. The STS Mc¹¹ series offers an extreme­ly appeal­ing price/performance ratio. With mas­ter­batch pro­cess­ing in mind, the com­pa­ny has equipped the STS Mc¹¹ twin screw extrud­er with new fea­tures that sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve the system’s han­dling and ease of clean­ing. The STS Mc¹¹ has now a new base frame design which allows for inte­gra­tion of water man­i­fold and wiring con­nec­tions for bet­ter clean­abil­i­ty with­out sac­ri­fic­ing acces­si­bil­i­ty. Oper­a­tions around the machine are now sim­pler since the com­pa­ny has reengi­neered the extrud­er insu­la­tion cov­ers to enable easy access to the process sec­tion and at the same time reduce dust con­t­a­m­i­na­tion or col­lec­tion. Smooth sur­faces make for eas­i­er clean­ing as well. The bar­rel heater shells are equipped with insu­la­tion plates to effec­tive­ly reduce the tem­per­a­ture on the sur­face of the process sec­tion. The feed bar­rel open­ing is fit­ted with a remov­able sleeve which facil­i­tates sim­ple clean­ing and there­fore quick­er prod­uct change over and the vent port is now equipped with a tray to catch vent drip­pings or vent flow. The com­pa­ny has also redesigned the die head to meet spe­cial mas­ter­batch pro­cess­ing require­ments. It can be quick­ly opened by sim­ply loos­en­ing a few bolts and ensures fast col­or changes. The STS 35 Mc¹¹ pre­sent­ed at Chi­naplas is out­fit­ted with a vol­u­met­ric K‑Tron T35 twin screw feed­er – an eco­nom­ic and reli­able solu­tion for feed­ing pow­ders into the process.

Strand pelletizer “SP treasure”

The firm will be exhibit­ing its strand pel­letiz­er “SP trea­sure”, which is exclu­sive­ly tai­lored to the Chi­nese mar­ket. It has an excel­lent qual­i­ty stan­dard and an attrac­tive price/performance ratio. It was devel­oped through close coop­er­a­tion between Cope­ri­on Pel­letiz­ing Tech­nol­o­gy, Offen­bach, Ger­many and Cope­ri­on Nan­jing, Chi­na. Cope­ri­on Pel­letiz­ing Tech­nol­o­gy is respon­si­ble for the design and pro­duces the cut­ting cham­ber, with the rest of the assem­bly man­u­fac­tured local­ly in Nan­jing. The “SP 220 trea­sure” strand pel­letiz­er is ide­al­ly suit­ed for pro­cess­ing of high­ly abra­sive strength­ened prod­ucts. It has a work­ing width of 220 mm, can process up to 55 strands at through­put rates of up to 2,500 kg/h.
With the trea­sure line, the firm is extend­ing its range with a high-qual­i­ty, val­ue for mon­ey strand pel­letiz­er. Key design fea­tures of the “SP trea­sure” pel­letiz­er include excel­lent acces­si­bil­i­ty and ease of clean­ing. The cut­ting cham­ber, which is so cru­cial to ensure a high prod­uct qual­i­ty, match­es the high stan­dard of SP pel­letiz­ers from Cope­ri­on that are well-estab­lished in the mar­ket. In addi­tion, Cope­ri­on has incor­po­rat­ed a sound-insu­lat­ed pel­let out­let into the “SP trea­sure”, which piv­ots to allow more effec­tive clean­ing. As an option the pel­letiz­er can be equipped with an inde­pen­dent low­er feed roll dri­ve for infi­nite pel­let length adjust­ment. The upper feed roll is avail­able in hard­ened stain­less steel and can be dri­ven inde­pen­dent­ly as an option. Adjustable clear­ance between upper and low­er feed roll is pos­si­ble. For ease of oper­a­tion, the “SP trea­sure” series can be equipped with an HMI (human-machine inter­face) and PLC controller.

State-of-the-art technology for highly accurate feeding

K‑Tron will exhib­it a high­ly accu­rate K2-ML-D5-T35/S60 Quick Change feed­er at Chi­naplas, fea­tur­ing the Act­i­Flow bulk solids acti­va­tor and Elec­tron­ic Pres­sure Com­pen­sa­tion (EPC) in com­bi­na­tion with a 2400 Series vac­u­um receiv­er for refill. The T35/S60 Quick Change feed­er (QC) is designed for appli­ca­tions requir­ing quick changeover of mate­ri­als and con­ve­nience of fast clean­ing. The QC feed­er allows for the removal of the entire feed­ing mod­ule with screws in place for replace­ment with a sec­ond unit. The removed feed­ing mod­ule can then be trans­port­ed to a clean­ing facil­i­ty for fur­ther dis­as­sem­bly, clean­ing and prepped for anoth­er mate­r­i­al.  Twin and sin­gle screw feed­ing mod­ules are avail­able. Sin­gle screw feed­ing units han­dle free flow­ing pow­ders, gran­ules, pel­lets and oth­er non-flood­ing mate­ri­als, while twin screw units are ide­al for flood­able pow­ders and more dif­fi­cult, sticky or hard-to-flow mate­ri­als. The high­ly accu­rate D5 plat­form scale fea­tures Smart Force Trans­duc­er weigh­ing tech­nol­o­gy to ensure exact­ly the cor­rect amount of mate­r­i­al is fed into the process, max­i­miz­ing end prod­uct qual­i­ty and min­i­miz­ing waste.
The Act­i­Flow smart bulk solids acti­va­tor offers an inno­v­a­tive method to reli­ably pre­vent bridg­ing and rat-hol­ing of cohe­sive bulk mate­ri­als in stain­less steel hop­pers with­out inter­nal hop­per agi­ta­tion. Act­i­Flow is a non-prod­uct con­tact device, con­sist­ing of a patent-pend­ing vibra­to­ry dri­ve and intel­li­gent con­trol unit, designed specif­i­cal­ly to work with K‑Tron’s line of gravi­met­ric loss-in-weight feed­ers. Togeth­er with the Act­i­Flow Con­trol unit, it con­tin­u­ous­ly acti­vates the mate­r­i­al inside the hop­per with an opti­mized fre­quen­cy and ampli­tude, with­out exert­ing any mechan­i­cal force on the bulk material.
The T35 is also equipped with K‑Tron’s unique Elec­tron­ic Pres­sure Com­pen­sa­tion sys­tem (EPC) for loss-in-weight feed­ers. EPC is a clever but sim­ple elec­tron­ic solu­tion for accu­rate and steady pres­sure com­pen­sa­tion in feed­er hop­pers and out­lets. The main advan­tages of the new sys­tem include improved accu­ra­cy and reli­a­bil­i­ty as well as low­er ini­tial cost and eas­i­er instal­la­tion com­pared to tra­di­tion­al mechan­i­cal pres­sure com­pen­sa­tion sys­tems. The mod­u­lar design incor­po­rates pres­sure sen­sors and elec­tron­ics tai­lored to inter­act smooth­ly with Cope­ri­on K‑Tron’s KCM feed­er con­trol sys­tem. Retro­fitting options for exist­ing feed­ers are avail­able. EPC can be installed on a major­i­ty of Cope­ri­on K‑Tron gravi­met­ric feed­ers in almost any appli­ca­tion and all industries.
The 2400 Series vac­u­um receivers pro­vide a high capac­i­ty sequenc­ing sys­tem pri­mar­i­ly used where larg­er con­vey­ing rates or long dis­tances are required, In appli­ca­tions with one or mul­ti­ple des­ti­na­tions. They are designed to high qual­i­ty stan­dards for pneu­mat­i­cal­ly con­vey­ing pow­der, pel­let and gran­u­lar mate­ri­als for the bulk mate­ri­als han­dling indus­tries. Con­vey­ing rates range from 720 to 15,000 lb/h (327 to 6,804 kg/h). On dis­play will be the 2415 Pel­let Receiver.

Bulk Solids Pump (BSP) for gentle feeding of free-flowing pellets, granules and friable bulk materials

Also on dis­play, Cope­ri­on K‑Tron’s K‑ML-BSP-150‑S Bulk Solids Pump (BSP) feed­er which is a unique alter­na­tive for gen­tle feed­ing of free flow­ing gran­u­lar mate­ri­als. The BSP feed­er does not use the usu­al screws/augers, belts or vibra­to­ry trays to con­vey the mate­r­i­al. Instead it uti­lizes pos­i­tive dis­place­ment action to feed free flow­ing mate­ri­als with astound­ing accu­ra­cy, offer­ing uni­form dis­charge, con­sis­tent vol­ume and gen­tle han­dling. The BSP feed­er has ver­ti­cal rotat­ing discs that cre­ate feed­ing ducts. Mate­r­i­al moves smooth­ly from stor­age hop­per to dis­charge out­let through a “prod­uct lock-up zone”, achiev­ing true lin­ear mass flow. With no pock­ets or screws and only one mov­ing part, the com­pact feed­er is cleaned in sec­onds, mak­ing it ide­al for appli­ca­tions with fre­quent mate­r­i­al changes. The BSP-150‑S feeds from 34 to 6700 dm³/h [1.2 to 237 ft³/h] using five feed­ing discs to cre­ate four feed­ing ducts; it fea­tures a stain­less steel feed­er body and uses a step­per motor. Two addi­tion­al mod­els are avail­able for small­er feed rates.