Machinery News

Piping machinery improvements from suppliers

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To cater to all of this, Italian machine maker Tecnomatic has developed a new pipe head for PE/PP single and multi-layer pipes.

Starting from 110 mm the new Venus pipe head is designed to apply the pipe inner cooling system called PAC (Pipe Air Cooling). The latter works in a way that air is pulled out from the pipe end counter extrusion direction through the pipe and pipe head by a high volume fan. The high temperature resistance fan is located close to the head.

This kind of cooling leads not only to a reduction of cooling length and less cooling tanks number, but also an improvement of the pipe quality, energy use or energy reclaiming option of the hot air that is pulled out, says Tecnomatic.

The company did a comparison test on a large-diameter heavy-wall pipe production at 850 kg/hour output to prove its point. It says when PAC is applied the wall thickness eccentricity reduced by 26% and ovality by 40%. Furthermore the average pipe temperature dropped by 20°C, or 35%, at the end of the pipe after cutting.

A recalculation also showed that the cooling length with PAC could be reduced by 40% to get the same pipe temperatures as before with longer cooling length without PAC. In the above mentioned comparison test the air temperature was around 100°C. At the given air flow and the air temperature, the energy content is approximately 45 kW.

Tecnomatic also tested small-wall thickness pipes and got a similar effect. It says, "This means that the PAC is also suitable and efficient for smaller pipes when extruded at high output."

IPC growing in Europe

Meanwhile, German machine supplier KraussMaffei Berstorff says it is seeing a high demand for its Internal Pipe Cooling (IPC) system within a short time. The company says demand has come from the Central and Eastern Europe regions and the US.

The IPC system uses ambient air to cool the pipe from the inside, in addition to the external cooling. The company says potential savings with regard to the cooling section, particularly for thick-walled pipes, is up to 60%. When it comes to increasing productivity, the processor has the option of using the IPC system to increase output by up to 40% without investing in additional downstream units for the cooling section, says the company.

The German supplier also offers integration of the IPC system into QuickSwitch systems, which allow the producer to change the pipe dimension in just a few minutes.