New testing lab allows film extruders to stretch the rules
A new film testing lab will allow visitors to push their experimental films to the limits, mimicking industrial conditions.
Plastic film extrusion equipment specialist Marchante has opened MIC (Marchante Innovation Centre), in the heart of the French Alps, about an hour from Geneva and Lyon.
The facility is equipped with a CastLab, seven-layer pilot cast extrusion line; and a StretchLab, a stretching simulator very close to industrial biaxial orientation processes for stretching trials.
The project received support from the Auvergne Rhône Alpes Region in France, and was designed by Marchante engineers.
The StretchLab is a dynamic stretching simulator. It allows visitors to deduce, from samples, industrial scale stretching parameters for films that require technical and innovative stretching configurations.
This technology allows visitors to study the stretchability of their films under processing conditions very close to industrial conditions, but with parameters that test the products further than existing films on the market, if desired.
The sample is placed at the inlet, with a minimum size of 75 mm x 75 mm. It will travel through five independently adjustable zones for heat setting, stretching, annealing or relaxing. These five independent zones are adjustable in terms of temperatures, sample speed in each zone, and air flow. Users can apply a wide variety of stretching patterns to the sample, while reproducing the angles of an industrial tenter frame, or MASIM.
Any type of film as a sample of 75 per 75 millimeters at inlet (PP, PET, PA, PE, bio-based materials, and other film structures), as well as nonwovens can be tested.
More than just a testing centre, Marchante is offering its in-house knowledge and measurement tools to help visitors commercialise new film concepts.
Innocent Marchante, the founder of the company, has been working on the development of biaxial stretching technologies since 1979, and his management team has more than 20 years of experience in this sector. The group hopes the new innovation centre will be one way to pass skills along to the next generation.
The group says it hopes that the MIC will become established as a research and development resource dedicated to future film and polymer research.
Interested parties can arrange a visit to the facility by emailing Caroline Marchante, marketing and sales development, or Ghislain Rosset, area sales manager.