Kundig International Inc.

New from Kundig International Inc., Grand Prairie, Texas, the K-300 Rotomat KT series of blown film thickness gauges rotates continuously in one direction, unlike conventional scanners.

Economical, non-nuclear capacitance gauges are opening new markets in blown film—primarily in barrier films, where they previously suffered serious shortcomings. New gauge designs, and new ways of mounting them, make capacitance technology much more flexible.

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.

Thanks to recent technical advances, relatively inexpensive capacitance thickness gauges reportedly are now stable enough for reliable closed-loop control, not just monitoring thickness variations. Another big step forward for capacitance gauges is the arrival of non-contact heads that can be mounted on the bubble instead of farther downstream on the layflat, thereby allowing quicker response to thickness variations.