Search

Two Southern California processors have boldly gone where no one has ever gone before. Peninsula Packaging and Global P.E.T. are recent entrepreneurial ventures whose owners believe that making recycled PET [...]

Extrusion machinery at the June NPE show in Chicago showed inventive ways to get more out of your floorspace and materials. One approach is to double output with conventional asynchronous [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This NPE show won't have a lot of extruders on the floor, either running or static. Instead, look for videos and announcements of new technology. You will also [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For thermoforming of both heavy-gauge sheet and thin-gauge packaging, the show will present new machines with unusual flexibility, able to form a wide variety of products and materials. [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Photovoltaic markets are growing explosively, and so are opportunities for specialty film producers. Solar cell and module production, which was forecasted to grow at 50% a year for [...]

Bioplastics were initially created for single-use applications like packaging and hotel key and gift cards. Their key benefit was that they wouldn't stick around long in the environment because of [...]

Up to now, the number-one biopolymer in commercial use, polylactic acid or PLA, has been available mainly from one supplier and in a limited range of varieties. But there appear [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Around three dozen, mostly European, processors are pushing commercial development of high-speed single-screw extrusion. They have installed more than 100 of the small hyper-drive machines whose screws turn [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Topping the raw-materials news at April's JEC composites show in Paris were three relatively inexpensive fibers that are said to match many of the properties of much costlier [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The focus this year at the international JEC Composites Show in Paris was not so much on brand-new processes as on adapting existing processes and materials for mass [...]

Many granulators on display at the K 2007 show in Dusseldorf last October were big models--150 to 200 hp--to enable higher throughputs or reclaiming larger parts and chunks. For example, [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] New recycling plants accounted for plenty of buzz at both the K 2007 show in Germany, last October and at the Plastics Recycling 2008 conference in Jacksonville, Fla., [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] EPS molding machine builders have been busy in R&D. The driver is strong growth in EPS shape molding, especially large parts like fish boxes and insulated concrete forms [...]

Major chemical companies are investing big bucks in new plants and technologies to produce plastics from annually renewable sources, not from petrochemicals. Some suppliers aim to produce today's conventional plastics [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Dramatic production demonstrations of cast and blown film set throughput records on the show floor in Dusseldorf. More high-speed demos were hosted by several German OEMs' at their [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In addition to the news reported in our September K Show preview (see Learn More), previously unrevealed developments in Dusseldorf include several ingenious devices designed to save energy, [...]

Foamed food trays made of polylactic acid (PLA) resin, the corn-based biopolymer, have a commercial toehold in Europe and are undergoing market tests here. They are used to package meat [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Chinese-built extruders are arriving here in small sizes and modest numbers. Most are bought one at a time by large, sophisticated processors who are sampling the Chinese market [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The future of vinyl siding may be more expensive, more wood-like, and painted. That prediction goes against the grain, so to speak, of what have been two of [...]

It's all about higher speeds and higher outputs at this year's 'K' show in Germany. The most unusual new phenomenon at the show is high-speed (high-rpm) extrusion of thin sheet, [...]

E-waste--today's term for discarded computers, monitors, hard drives, copiers, printers, fax machines, telephones of all types, and even televisions--is collected in large volumes in this country, but not always for [...]

Topping the raw-materials news at the big JEC international composites show in Paris last April, was increasing use of natural and thermoplastic fibers, 'hybrid' fiber combinations, small-diameter glass fibers, and [...]

News at the big JEC composites show in Paris in April was all about speed and automation. New technologies include faster tool building, faster fiber and tape winding (thermoplastic and [...]

* Recycling news from the Society of Plastics Engineers' Global Plastics Environmental Conference (GPEC) in Orlando, Fla., in March focused on PET, nylon, and waste plastics in electronics--in other words, [...]

Smaller diameters, thinner walls, and more complex structures--that's a short description of the latest in medical tubing, which was exhibited at February's MD&M West show in Anaheim, Calif. These micro-fine [...]

Typical Melt Flows PMMA 1.5 9 ABS 11 38.6 PC 11.4 17 Elastomer PE 0.9 6.1 PP 0.9 3.9 PS 1.8 9.1 EVOH 1.5 8 Nylon 4.5 13.9 HDPE 7.5 [...]

After years of hype and exaggeration, market demand for bioplastics made from renewable resources like corn or potatoes is no longer just an ecologist's dream. Most of the action is [...]

Cover Story Filler isn't a bad word in T-shirt bags and can liners any more. It's now another name for survival. With margins razor thin and resin prices high, processors [...]

Many of the resins and reinforcements introduced at JEC, the big international composites show in Paris this spring, are intended to make molding processes faster and more efficient, especially for [...]

History shows that wars drive plastics development, and the Iraq war is no exception. It's bringing among other things an urgent need to retrofit vehicles and buildings against bullets and [...]

NPE 2006 presented a bevy of features to make film, sheet, pipe, and profile extrusion more efficient. These included wider use of direct-drive, permanent-magnet, synchronous-torque motors, new automation devices, dies [...]

With resin prices so high, the NPE show in Chicago last month was an opportune time for processors to hear about more efficient, durable, and cost-effective equipment for putting scrap [...]

Throughput capacities are going up for compounding equipment of all types. Higher outputs generate more heat, so you'll also see lots of equipment with enhanced cooling. Above all, you'll see [...]

Microlayer films are cast coextrusions with anywhere from 30 to 1000 layers, each layer from 0.02 to 5 microns thick. Not some futuristic fantasy, these films are very real commercial [...]

For skeptics who may doubt that nanocomposites have yet proven themselves commercially viable materials, last year's Nanocomposites 2005 Conference in San Francisco presented plenty of evidence that 'nanos' are beginning [...]

Processors have coped for two years in an environment of escalating resin prices. Some processors have sailed through this storm virtually unscathed. The fortunate ones can pass prices through to [...]

Exterior wood-fiber composites like decks and rails haven't lived up to some of the early claims of long, maintenance-free life. In fact, composite decks with high wood loadings can shrink, [...]

Several of the exciting new technologies at this spring's JEC Composites show in Paris emerged from the development of the Boeing 787 and Airbus A380 passenger planes. Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, [...]

Molding separate hollow parts on a pipe corrugator is a home-grown technique used by a small number of processors. They discovered it offers higher outputs and numerous other advantages over [...]

New molding technologies seen at the JEC Composites Show in Paris in April promise dramatically faster cycles than are achievable with autoclaves or RTM. One novel technique rapidly heats and [...]

Capacitance gauges are attempting to solve their historic limitations in blown film thickness measuring, in particular their inability to measure barrier films. Virtually all makers of capacitance gauges brought new [...]

The latest and most sophisticated EPS and EPP moldings, some of which were displayed at the K 2004 Show in Dusseldorf last October, are durable applications made with multiple stops [...]

Topping recycling news at the latest giant K Show in Dusseldorf, Germany, were new compactor technologies for films and foams that can densify plastic waste for recycling and even mold [...]

Stretching film in the machine Direction magnifies its properties--not just a little, but a lot. MD orientation of blown and cast films, whether off-line or in-line with extrusion, enhances barrier, [...]

TOP OF THE NEWS * New types of drives power blown film and tubing extrusion. * Rotating cores orient blown film in the die. * Adjustable calibrator varies pipe diam. [...]

You might call it a quiet invasion. A whole new category of extruder motor is emerging ring-shaped, high-torque, permanent-magnet synchronous motors. Besides being unusually compact and eerily quiet, they use [...]

* Several recent software introductions for composites design, processing, and quality control offer more sophisticated predictions of both processability and finished part properties. One new product actually controls the process. [...]

At K 2004, at least a half-dozen European machine builders will show new direct-drive extruders running gearless--or nearly gearless--drives with substantially higher rpm and output rates than conventional extruders of [...]

Extruded decking still drives the embryonic wood-filled plastics market. But injection and compression molded wood composites are coming on strong, and extruded profiles are moving toward more complex millwork shapes. [...]

New approaches to robotics and mechanization introduced at the Paris JEC show in April are speeding up composite molding processes from spray up to thermoplastic compression molding. Other highlights included [...]