A TOP EUROPEAN PRODUCER CHOOSES TECNOMATIC TO SET NEW PERFORMANCE IN THE PRODUCTION OF PEX & PERT MULTI-LAYER PIPES

Domestic plastic pipes have experimented a significant increment in their use in the market. The advances in research and development of materials have made the plastic pipes to be nowadays one of the materials to choose for the water supply, due to the economic and balance that they represent. The advantages of  the plastic pipes are among others, the no corrosion and resistance to many chemical products. They are flexible and easy to install, they can join by fusion, and they are light so they facilitate the transport and its handling.

Many years of experience, supplying lines for multilayer pipes, has made Tecnomatic’s product one of the most reliable and performing for the production of structural pipes for those applications. Nonetheless the company hasn’t stopped to innovate and has recently delivered, to a main European producer, a multi-purpose line for the production of both PE-RT and Pe-x pipes in five layers.

The key-component of the line is a further developed model of the ATHENA die-head series. Based on a radial distributors design, the product has been optimized with slight modification to reach even more flexibility and accuracy in the distribution, especially important to shape the EVOH and adhesive into very thin and uniform layers.

The radial distributors do not have any dead zones or edges where material could stop and grant an easy cleaning and rapid assembling/disassembling operation. Radial spirals allow low pressure losses and high flexibility in terms of layers structure (thick or thin layers) and number of layers, while their short flow path leads to reduced residence time and rapid material and colour changes.

The line which has a working range from 8 to 32mm is characterized by performance up to 60 m/min for the five layers Pe-x or PE-RT but, it has also the peculiarity to work PE pipes in two layers up to 63 mm, by mean of an additional die-head VENUS MULTI 2.

To reach such high performance every part of the line has been studied in minute detail. The extrusion line configuration consists of a main extruder ATLAS 60.30 EVO, part of the revised serie of extruder in 30 L/D which has been further optimized for higher output, melt homogeneity and energy consumption, while co-extruders MIZAR and ATLAS 30 are used for adhesive, EVOH and external layers. All the extruders work in synchronization mode and are integrated and fed by a gravimetric system for a total of eight dosing components. A ultrasonic wall thickness station continuously control all the pipe parameters, as eccentricity, wall thickness, diameter and ovality during the production process to ensure a top quality pipe. To manage the high speed coiling the line is completed with a fully automatic coiler of the company FB Balzanelli, especially designed to process both PE-RT, Pe-x and PE coiling.