In recent years, the flooring market has shown a strong increase in LVT (Luxury Vinyl Tile) demand worldwide, thanks to its advantages in relation to durability and minimal maintenance requirements. Promixon, an Italian company specialising in the manufacture of mixing plants for plastics and powder coatings, has heavily invested in product development and strengthened its supply with high technology improvements in several fields, also for flooring application (WPC, LVT etc.).

The upgrades are supplied with customized solutions, in order to satisfy every single customer request and guarantee long-lasting performance and longevity of the systems.

This attitude let Promixon win a key bid for the manufacture of the biggest single mixing plant ever produced in mixing history.

Destined for LVT production and 100% made in Italy, the XBlend-MC/2500/8600 is composed of the high speed heating mixer model XM-2500 and the high efficiency horizontal cooler XC-8600. The complete plant has been delivered and successfully started-up at a major Usa company.

Working at 8,500 h/year, this huge mixing system of nearly 12,000 kg weight has been completely customized to variable filling level and to process a wide range of formulations, always oriented to the reduction of mixing times and optimizing energy consumption. This “monster” is producing 1,200 kg/batch of PVC dry-blend at a rate of 8 batch/h for an output of 9,600 kg/h.

Furthermore, the cooler is specially engineered to receive up to 1,500 kg of CaCO3 filler each batch mixing it with the dry-blend during cooling, a special featured stirrer to ensure the optimum dispersion while cooling the batch.

The hot/cold mixing combination got as beating heart a five stages high-intensity mixing tool in stainless steel with tungsten carbide coating for wear protection. It also has inclined blades - 20 degrees the upper one and 30 degrees the lower one - to ensure the best mixing vortex.

In the heating and cooler, all surfaces in contact with the processed material are mirror polished, in order to reduce cleaning and maintenance times and to avoid residues at the end of mixing cycle, thus eliminating any contamination issues when changing formulation and process conditions from batch to batch. The versatility of the mixing plant allows processors develop new products and explore the use of new raw materials.

Also the water circuit in the cooling jacket has been improved, optimizing the flow of coolant water in the double jacket with a real coil, and reducing by 30% the cooling times. Finally, the software has been adapted to specific processor requirements with a Scada (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) solution interfaced with the customer ERP system for data exchange, statistics, traceability of production lots, cost evaluation and much more.