Dutch machine maker VMI says it’s a relatively new phenomenon to have a customer purchase both its Combex Gearpump Extruder and a Cantilever Cooler with MHD 500 Stacker to be installed in one production line. VMI has been selling both the Gearpump Extruder and Cantilever Cooler separately for a while now. Selling them together has proved to be a success over recent years, as especially last year showed, it says.
VMI’s first combined line is sold to a new customer in Russia. This customer indicated it was important to them to be able to purchase both machines under a single contract. VMI’s second combined line, sold to a Slovenian customer, featured a newly developed gearpump created in collaboration with the R&D team in Epe and Runding. Processes in Slovenia have continued to develop and VMI says it expects to also sell this customer a second line in the near future.
The process for this combined line is as follows: “At the customer’s plant, hot or cold rubber is fed into a so-called strainer. A VMI strainer always consists of a screw extruder and gearpump combination. These strainers are manufactured at VMI Extrusion in Runding. First the rubber is heated and/or plasticised by the screw extruder. The pump builds up pressure to push the rubber through a fine mesh filter, a sort of sieve. This operation strains contamination from the rubber, cleaning it before it’s transferred to the Cantilever Cooler.
In the Cantilever Cooler, the rubber strips are dipped into an anti-tack solution and then suspended in loops onto the cooling rack bars for fan-cooling. The temperature of the extrusion is a crucial element of the process. If the rubber strips aren’t hot enough, the liquid can’t evaporate and the strips won’t dry. If the temperature gets too high during the straining, the rubber quality deteriorates. At the end of the process, the rubber strips are neatly stacked into a box. If the strips are stacked in the box in a smart, orderly fashion, they can be easily reclaimed later for our technical rubber customers’ other applications.
It is now looking at producing all the larger pumps for new lines in this fashion from now on. The benefit of doing it this way is that the extruder and gearpump can be cleaned faster and easier.
(RJA)
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