Informative lectures, intensive networking and exciting live demonstrations in the technical center: This year’s Leistritz workshop again proved to be an all-round successful event.
A comprehensive “360° view of the masterbatch process” was offered by the international workshop to which Leistritz Extrusionstechnik GmbH invited visitors to Nuremberg on 6-7 November 2018. “Our goal was to provide the participants with an understanding of as many steps as possible in the masterbatch production process chain and to present new, interesting clues for their own processes”, explains Anton Fürst, Managing Director at Leistritz. More than 130 participants received pure expert knowledge starting from pulverization, mixing and extrusion through to the sensible use of waxes and quality tests. This was very well received. Jürgen Cleenewerck, Manager Production & Technology at BASF says: „As a participant, I liked the presentations very much. They were very professional, not a promotional event. The atmosphere invited to networking, so that I was able to have very good conversations with representatives of Leistritz and the participating partners.“
Many findings from the theoretical lectures were demonstrated live on the ZSE MAXX twin-screw extruders in the Leistritz technical center. „The highlight of our workshop, which took place for the 14th time this year, is always visiting our technical center,“ Anton Fürst says. “As I said, we wanted to provide an all-round view on the production process. That’s why we used a sophisticated red masterbatch as an example to explain the entire process chain live in our technical center”. First, a premix of 50% wax and 50% red pigment was produced in a mixer. In order to obtain the best quality masterbatch, it was processed in a ZSE 35 iMAXX. This was followed by an underwater pelletizer. The color quality of the produced pellets was measured inline using UV-VIS spectroscopy and offline with a pressure filter test. The identification of the speck formation was carried out by means of a blown film line. The material was then fed into a ZSE 50 MAXX film line to produce a cast film consisting of 68% polymer, 30% calcium carbonate and 2% masterbatch. Here, too, a look was taken at the material quality: thanks to the Leistritz Online Elongational Rheometer, which was positioned at the processing unit in front of the melt pump, shear and elongation viscosity could be measured.
Further demonstrations in the technical center were the pulverization of polymer and the incorporation of 30% effect pigment in 70% PS in a split feed process on a ZSE 27 MAXX twin screw extruder. “As always, it was a very successful event in our workshop series, which will be continued in 2020 with current topics after the K show,” Anton Fürst summarizes.
