battenfeld-cincinnati offers unique new technologies and customer-oriented services

Entirely in the interest of optimal customer satisfaction, the extrusion specialist battenfeld-cincinnati continuously improves its products. At the NPE in March, the company presented its options for individual wear counseling and showcased a modular anti-wear concept with latest technological solutions, which offer an extremely interesting price-performance ratio for all applications. Here, the new “STC“ (superior tungsten carbide) coating constitutes an absolute novelty for extrusion applications and offers the option of anti-wear protection tailored to customers‘ needs. For processing both corrosive and strongly abrasive materials, the innovative solution from battenfeld-cincinnati provides maximum resistance to wear and a long service life.

Hard metal anti-wear concept at an attractive price/performance ratio
The new STC tungsten carbide coating for plasticizing units in extruders has been developed as the result of an exclusive technology partnership with a coating technology specialist. In this way, battenfeld-cincinnati has become the first extruder manufacturer worldwide to offer a perfect hard metal coating not only for its own products, but also for all other extrusion applications, regardless of the equipment’s brand or maker.

So far, hard metal coatings have been used mainly for high-tech applications such as in aerospace technology, motor sports, the petroleum industry, and for drilling and machining equipment.

battenfeld-cincinnati now offers its customers a top-quality hard metal coating for extruder screws and barrels. This revolutionary coating material combines the abrasion and erosion resistance of TC hard metals with an extremely strong resistance to the acids of chlorine and bromine halides. If desired, the STC coating can be applied either just to certain parts of the screw geometry, or the entire screw can be encapsulated in STC.

“The substantially higher wear resistance of the newly developed hard metal coating compared to the conventional interior coatings with a lower tungsten carbide content and softer alloying elements has been repeatedly confirmed by various scientific studies, and also shows excellent results in field tests”, Peter Hammer, Vice President Technology remarks with pleasure.

battenfeld-cincinnati already has a number of units in the field throughout Europe and is now looking for customer test sites in the USA and Latin America. The battenfeld-cincinnati team will be happy to inform interested customers about the properties of the new STC coating and explain the advantages and benefits of using it at customers’ production sites.

The technology
The special benefit of the new STC technology is that the tungsten carbides support each other as a result of their extremely high concentration and are also bonded in a hard metal matrix. Soldered or centrifuged coatings currently on the market come with a much lower tungsten carbide content, bonded in a comparatively soft matrix. In contrast to conventional tungsten carbide coatings, the new STC technology features a roughly 30% higher weight proportion of tungsten carbide, which enables the carbides to support each other.

The technical differences or advantages of the innovative STC technology can be described by the facts listed below:
1. ~ 30% higher tungsten carbide content
2. More resilient, harder matrix material
3. Optimized nano particle size for maximized physical
attributes
4. Extremely dense, compact surface properties
5. Extremely high degrees of hardness combined with high toughness values
6. Maximum chemical and physical wear resistance for a longer service life

The new coating is particularly interesting for PVC compounds with high filler content, PE with abrasive colorants, PP with talcum or fiberglass content, post-consumer regrinds or natural fiber composites.

Wear inspection and counseling as a customer service
For early detection of damage to screws and barrels and preven-tion of resulting unplanned production standstills, the battenfeld-cincinnati service team offers its customers free-of-charge wear inspection. For this purpose, a battenfeld-cincinnati engineer comes into the customer’s production hall on site and carries out measurements of wear on barrels and screws over the entire length of the processing unit.

All types of single screw extruders are measured, as well as both parallel and conical twin screw extruders. Following the inspection, the customer receives a report containing overview diagrams and wear data sheets for further analysis and counseling by the battenfeld-cincinnati specialist.

This enables early response in terms of process technology ad-justments and/or timely procurement of spare parts to prevent machine failures and production downtimes. As a result, the cost-efficiency of the production plants can be increased significantly.

Source: battenfeld-cincinnati