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More than 240 exhibitors from every facet of the package printing [ampersand] converting industries will meet more than 2000 attendees.
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News | New Products
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Bobst Lyon Reports Expansion
The company is expanding its factory in France and will open a new Competence Center in 2018 to aid machinery development as well as service
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Contact Originators Offers Wide Plate for Corrugated
The 2.8-mm-wide flexo plate reportedly allows corrugated printers to maximize their print yields
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Smart Planet Technologies Starts Paper Cup Recycling Program
With support from Allan Company & Replenysh, company says reCUP Recycling Initiative takes a major step addressing global paper cup recycling problem
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Vetaphone Corona Units Installed at CeDo
The European company says it has used Vetaphone equipment for years and has always likes the quality and consistency it produces
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BALDWIN Acquires Digital Ink System
An agreement with Quad/Graphics results in the acquisition, allowing BALDWIN to continue development for packaging, corrugated, and more
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DowDuPont to Invest in Expansion
The company will invest $100 Million to expand manufacturing capacity of specialty materials at Sabine River Works
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Monadnock Announces Label Product
Envi 96 Label, part of company’s EnviPortfolio line of substrates, is said to offer high performance as well as graphics that “pop”
White Papers
• Designing a Successful Retort-Grade Packaging Structure
• Hermetic-Seal Performance of BOPP Laminate Structures in VFFS Pouch Applications
• Methods and Design Considerations for the Application of Hot Melt Coatings
• BOPP Laminate Structures for “Over-the-Mountain” VFFS Pouch Applications
Expert Advice
TAPPI Extrusion Coating Short Course
- Published: September 26, 2013
There was a good turnout of about 55 people not counting instructors, mostly from the USA, but with several from overseas, including Southeast Asia. As basic science and engineering doesn't really change much, the material covered was largely the same from the previous course, with a few notable exceptions.
Christine Ronaghan from Cloeren gave a marvelous presentation on the topic of coextrusion, delving into basic science, then the evolution of applied engineering from the original Dow coex technology to Egan's divider plates to plate technology to spool coex systems. The only word that was missing from Christine's talk was "SIMULTANEOUS". Coextrusion is the simultaneous extrusion of two or more layers of molten polymer material out of the same die, at the same time. I can't tell you how many times this comes up in court and how much time, effort and money companies waste defending themselves against this otherwise obvious definition.
Sam Iuliano of Nordson/EDI gave a nice talk on dies, contrasting and comparing those available as well as teaching about basic polymer processing in extrusion coating. This is the one topic that I wish TAPPI would spend more time on versus simple papers on pieces of the puzzle. To me, extrusion coating is a three legged stool comprise of equipment, materials and processing. Sam, as well as Scott Weber of Lyondell-Basell, did an excellent job of bringing the extruder adapter into focus as a primary tool for controlling the extrusion process.
Another notable to me was the presentation by Scott Wagner of Pelletron, who discussed material handling and equipment available to help control and eliminate fines. In a nutshell, specialty elbows exist to absorb the momentum change cause by curves in the conveying system rather than have that same momentum change be converted to heat, thus causing fines.
One real faux-pas in the short course was on the subject of "Gel" troubleshooting and prevention. In that talk, gels were implied to be any contamination or defect which causes an optical disturbance in the product. Gels have a narrow and particular definition in polymer processing, that being a high molecular weight, crosslinked portion of polymer whose molecular weight is so high, in the order of millions, that the gel cannot be melted. In other words, instead of being a true viscoelastic material, capable of flow in many domains, it is elastic material that cannot be melted with limited flow properties. I feel the need to point this out, again because of the potential of misuse in the legal system in the United States. Gels are not particles of dust, cardboard fiber, gasketing material, etc, that may be introduced into the extruder from extraneous sources.
All the being said, blues music is excellent in Memphis. I prefer St. Louis or Texas BBQ to Memphis BBQ, but I suppose that is a subjective matter, better left alone.