pilot coater

1 meter wide (40 in)

Western Michigan University can take your project from coating through production printing and/or converting in one location.

The Western pilot plant staff excels not only in running novel basestocks and new chemistries; they also are exceptionally good in adapting or retrofitting the coater to apply new surface treatment application and metering technologies.

Pilot Coater
Looking from the coater end toward the dry end.

Applicators:

Metering size press (MSP/film press), simultaneous two-sided

Pond size press, inclined

C1S — Roll applicator (flooded-nip), LDTA

C1S — Short dwell applicator, SDTA

Airknife

Metering:

Rigid or bent blade in a large variety of sizes

Rods — grooved or smooth in a large variety of diameters and grooves

Calender

On-line

Default set-up three-nip hot-soft, one-nip steel-to-steel

Four hot-soft nip also available

Steam moisturizer available before

Width:

40 in (1 m) nominal

20 to 43 in (510 to 1090 mm) if not calendering or using steel-to-steel calender nip

Air knife at 26 in (660 mm)

Cores:

3 in (75 mm) ID, 4 in ID, or 6 in ID

May use other sizes, please contact director for more information.

Roll maximum:

Diameter 60 in (1500 mm) or 3750 lbs (1700 kg)

Speed maximum:

4,000 fpm (1220 m/min)

Basis weight:

Very light weights to very heavy boards

Supply fill volume:

36 gal. (136 l) with filter

26 gal. (100 l) without filter

Supply tanks:

Two 250 gal. (950 l), hot water jacketed, steam drop leg, variable speed agitator

Requires 42 gallons (160 l) fill volume to reach agitator

Converting & Printing

Rewinding and slitting rolls is available on site. Rolls are rewound to make composite rolls of the various trial points or slit down to narrower rolls to fit a variety of converting operations. The 1 meter width of the coater produces rolls that will fit many commercial presses. Rotogravure and flexographic printing presses are available on site. WMU can also arrange local resources for sheeting or corrugating. The corrugator can take surface treated liner and/or medium off the WMU coater and produce a box. A finished corrugated box is ideal for further testing or providing sample products for your customers.

Documentation

A concise multipage report is provided for each trial. The report contains trends of real-time process data recorded off the machine automatically, coating formulations, machine set points, basestock rolls used, all test results, and operational notes for each trial point.

TOP