For the first time in its 35-year history, Contrex will be attending the K trade fair held in Düsseldorf, where it will be showcasing its latest innovations for extruding tubes, profiles, sheets, and blown films, including: cooling rings, gravimetric dosing systems, process control devices, as well as measurement and control tools. K 2016 will also present the opportunity for Contrex to showcase, for the first time, its new membership as part of the Moretto S.p.A. group of companies which took it over in March 2015. 

The spotlights will be on the Atlantis™ 23T cooling ring, designed to drastically reduce the blown film production start-up time. It is an innovative high-efficiency automatic multi-flow air ring with sectorial thermal modulation, allowing for an accurate and automatic film thickness adjustment. With this system it is possible to drastically reduce the thickness tolerances along the entire circumference of the bubble, thus compensating the channelling of the melt flows and possible misalignments. 

The system uses three cooling flows with automatic thickness adjustment, controlling the stretching in combination with the thermal factor.

The integration of these controls, therefore, gives more stability to the bubble, increases the cooling power and enables a higher line productivity. A thermally insulated carbon chamber also manages colder air flows, further improving the cooling performance of the system.

The precise thickness control guarantees a reduction of the two sigma factor by up to 80% while still maintaining a high degree of flexibility in production changes. Moreover, combined with the automatic lifter system, Atlantis 23T improves the production efficiency by 50%, by automatically lifting the ring top to the desired height depending on the type of production.

As regards continuous gravimetric dosing for extrusion applications, the company will be showing the new Gramixo. Building on a Moretto design, it features a traditional double-eyelid shutter capable of 25 millisecond batching speed. At the heart of the system there is a tilting mixer, weighed on a double load-cell, ensuring maximum precision. The mixer also features a totalizer function that provides real-time and on-demand reporting of actual consumption; in addition, the machine chassis consists of transparent panels that provide unique visibility to the dosing process.  An integrated four colours LED lighting system indicates the current machine operating status.

Last but not least, the Navigator 9000 system will be on show, allowing the cooling ring, the dosing system and the thermal modulation to be managed in a closed loop when producing blown film. The Navigator unit coordinates all the technology implemented to manufacture the blown film. Navigator 9000 represents the heart of the automation system and each parameter is controlled and managed by a powerful computer that, by utilizing the special Batch Timing System algorithm, makes it possible to start production automatically in just two minutes.