Materials formulation, cast and blown film extrusion, sheet extrusion, printing, and laminating come under one roof at this processor.

Hosokawa Alpine American, Natick, Mass., is offering new machine-direction orientation (MDO) technology that is said to dramatically reduce the amount of film to be edge-trimmed compared with other MDO designs.

Blown film towers may have been scarce, but there was no shortage of new technology aimed at helping to make extrusion processors more profitable.

There won't be many blown-film lines running, but there is still much in the way of innovation going on in extrusion and compounding.

The story of Cadillac Products Packaging is a 65-year-old tale that combines a steadfast commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction with a broad range of product offerings.

In blown film, equipment and material suppliers have come together to push five-layer technology into non-barrier applications previously held by three-layer films.

In most segments of extrusion technology, the word at K 2010 is more.

The four partners who started FlexTech Packaging Inc. in Cincinnati three years ago all came from high-profile jobs with big packaging companies like James River and Jefferson Smurfitt.

Peter Schulz had recently retired from Hoechst Celanese in Dallas, and Richard Nurse was a consultant, when both were called in to help shape up BPI Packaging Technologies Inc. in North Dighton, Mass.

Business might be slow in most blown film extrusion markets, but leading-edge processors are preparing for better times by tapping into a seven-layer line installed last year at Dow Chemical Co.’s Film Application Development Center (FADC) in Freeport, Tex.

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 find lots of ingenious peripheral devices to improve output and quality and save resin. Some will do all three, and cost less into the bargain.

Clear Lam Packaging Inc. is a mid-sized, family-owned packaging company with an enviable growth rate of over 20%/yr, unusual at a time when many mid-sized packaging companies are being bought out and disappearing. The secret, Clear Lam believes, has been its aggressive investment in R&D.

Dramatic production demonstrations of cast and blown film set throughput records on the show floor in Dusseldorf.

It’s all about higher speeds and higher outputs at this year’s “K” show in Germany.

When Borealis Group in Austria launched the world's fi rst bimodal LLDPE grades eight years ago, it was targeting thicker industrial blown fi lms that could take advantage of the material's broad MWD, high melt strength, and extraordinary tensile strength.

Polymer Packaging Inc.'s new converting plant in Massillon, Ohio, will offer what is believed to be the first toll capability for machine-direction orientation (MDO) in the U.S.

Filler isn’t a bad word in T-shirt bags and can liners any more.

 NPE 2006 presented a bevy of features to make film, sheet, pipe, and profile extrusion more efficient.

Machine-direction orientation is still discovering new market opportunities. But the technical difficulties are so great that some big projects never came of age. New equipment could make it easier.

The show was packed with new equipment for pipe and profile, including extruders re­designed for higher outputs and/or lower cost, plus new ways to adjust die and calibrator diameters or switch dies and calibrators more quickly.

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 the same size.

NPE will show higher outputs of practically everything, as advances in grooved feeds, servo drives, screw torque, mixing screws, dies, and downstream cooling, cutting, and handling make everything run faster.

New-generation winders for blown and cast film are winding bigger, better rolls at higher speeds and lower tension. They've gotten so fast that cast film lines can now realize their full productive potential.

Gearless extrusion, cryogenic profile calibration, wireless data communications, and automatic start-up of blown film lines are just a few of the new ways to raise efficiency and output that were highlighted at NPE.

Probably the most intriguing news in extrusion at K 2001 will be a novel way to extrude clear film that differs from standard blown and cast methods.

Three years after a fire destroyed most of its operation, Tex-Trude came back as a more productive extrusion business.

U.S. processors still have some catching up to do when it comes to getting the most out of grooved-feed extruders. But decades of European experience offer lessons on how to use grooved feeds to run even resins like TPU, nylon, and PET.

Synthetic paper based on filled polyethylene or polypropylene film has been around for decades without causing much excitement--until recently.

Where's the extruder?" was the comment often heard about the most unusual extrusion exhibit at K'98, a screwless, cone-shaped device that can extrude two or more melt streams.