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 Founded in 1903, Germany’s Maschinenfabrik Max Kroenert GmbH & Co KG is an international market leader whose name has become virtually synonymous with state-of-theart machines and production lines for the converting of web materials. Kroenert’s machines coat or laminate paper, aluminium and copper foils, and plastic films with nearly unlimited coating compounds ranging from lacquers, adhesives, waxes and resins to hotmelts, acrylates, primers and polymers.
While Kroenert is perhaps best known for its coating and laminating machines, equipment to process pre-pregs has also been on the company’s radar for a number of years, according to Frank Schäfer, Sales Manager at Kronert’s home base in Hamburg-Altona.
An abbreviated expression for pre-impregnated composite fibers, pre-pregs are composites based on carbon, glass or aramid fibers that combine outstanding mechanical and chemical properties with an extremely low weight. Hundreds of applications in industries like aerospace, wind power, medical technology, automobiles, shipbuilding and sporting equipment would be unthinkable without today’s modern pre-pregs. Kroenert offers several types of machines for both horizontal and vertical pre-preg processes. Horizontal systems are based on the application of epoxy resin films on release coated substrates (PAK EP) and impregnating machines (RECO EP) for mono- bi- or mutliaxial fabrics and UD tapes with unidirectional alignment of fibers. Machines using vertical processing directly impregnate the materials and solvents contained in the applied resins are evaporated in a vertical dryer.
Our photo shows the PAK 400 EP coating line built around Kroenert’s rollerbased 400 EP coating head. Designed to meet the pre-preg industry’s demanding requirements for epoxy resin coatings, the PAK EP 400 offers roller tolerances of maximum 2 μm, working widths of up to 1,800 mm and maximum processing speeds of 150 m/min with viscosities up to 1,000 Pas. Coating weight tops out at approximately 5 g/m2 with a maximum coating weight of roughly 1000 g/m2.
Other PAK 400 EP engineering highlights include the use of high-precision rollers and low-tolerance roller bearings to ensure a highly uniform coating weight. Exact temperature control of rollers and feeding box, deflection compensation of the rollers, ceramic coatings for significantly longer service life, anti-stick coatings for easy cleaning and optional laminating stations for feeding PE foils or fleeces round out the list of technical highlights.
Kroenert will have wrapped up its pre-summer trade fair swing by the time this issue of TNI goes to press, but interested readers can rub shoulders with the company at several events scheduled for later this year. Watch for Kroenert at the 34th Munich Adhesive and Finishing Symposium, scheduled for October 19 - 21
in Munich, Germany, or the International Converting Exhibition ICE, slated for November 24 - 26, 2009, also in Munich.
Maschinenfabrik
Max Kroenert
GmbH & Co KG
Schuetzenstrasse 105
D-22761 Hamburg
Tel. (+49) 40 85393-01
Fax (+49) 40 85393-171
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
www.Kroenert.de
Reprint from TECHNOLOGY NEWS INTERNATIONAL Issue 95/2009
Copyright © 2009 by TNI Technologie Verlags GmbH, Muenster/Germany |
