Co-rotating Twin Screw Extruder - The Key to High-Quality Composite Materials

2021-09-14
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There are many types of plastic extruders in the market, such as single screw extruder, co-rotating twin screw extruder, counter-rotating twin screw extruder, planetary extruder, etc. Each type of extruder has its own unique mechanism design to respond to the production of various plastics. Among them, CYKF Co-rotating Twin Screw Extruder is the most popular product deeply trusted by customers worldwide. It is also the key consideration for high strength Composite Material Extrusion.


What is Composite Material Extrusion?


Composite material consists of two or more constituents, i.e. polymers, metal, or ceramic, which is multiphase material made by a variant forming process. It possesses advantages from all the material components, contributing to a new kind material with better property performance. The development of plastic composite is quite diverse and complex, and the variability in the material extrusion process is also different. Good extruder design can bring outstanding physical properties to the material while poor extruder design will lead to disappointing material properties that increase defect rate of production.


Advantages of Co-rotating Twin Screw Extruder

Many people may ask, single screw extruder can also produce plastic composite, why choose co-rotating twin screw extruder? The reason comes from the two screws of co-rotating twin screw extruder. Different from the all-in-one screw design as single screw extruder and counter-rotating twin screw extruder. Through highly flexible arrangement of the screw elements plus our high-precision screw processing capabilities, they can enhnce plastics, additives and fillers with sufficient and even dispersion, stirring, compression and mixing behaviors. This is what a single screw extruder can’t reach.

The design of the co-rotating twin screw extruder includes a heating system, a heat dissipation system, and a die in addition to a screw design. The design of all related systems must be balanced with each other to optimize the performance of the equipment. As the screw can be known as the heart of the extruder.

If the screw element with unmatch arrangement and combination, processing poor accuracy or used the material with inferior durability, the produced plastic pellets will have poor physical properties and instability, or even contain impurities materials. Eventually, the low-quality pellets will affect the results of injection or extrusion production. Therefore, a good screw design can brings a smooth, high quality and high efficient production to the extruder, which is one of the key factors of the production capacity.


Major Differences : Single Screw Extruder VS. Co-rotating Twin Screw Extruder.

Extruder type Screw Qty Screw type Applied material Mixing behavior
(for compounds)
Single-screw 1 pc One piece Limited, low-flexibility Uneven
Co-rotating twin-screw 2 pcs Combined by lost of screw elements Various, high-flexibility Even


Co-rotating Twin Screw Extruder Solution

CYKF's CK-HT co-rotating twin screw extrusion line series are constantly evolving from the development of customers’ requirements and global change. Over the past few decades, we have accumulated hundreds of practical experience in plastic compounds used in various industries, such as PP with chaff powder, rice or oak powder added, PE with carbon added, PLA biodegradable materials, PBT with glass fiber or silver anti-bacteria powder , PE with stainless steel powder, HDPE and LDPE mixed with pearl powder, etc. These precious experiences have made our team become familiar with the physical and chemical properties of various plastics, additives, and fillers. Therefore, we are absolutely confident that we can design the optimal arrangement and combination of screw elements for different material formulations, and provide high-quality, high-stability plastic pellets, while maintaining high-efficiency extruder operation.

Apart from the planning of the extruder, we will also design high-efficiency feeding systems and pelletizing systems according to the added ratio of additives or fillers and material characteristics. The plastic extrusion pelletizing line carefully programed by our team has always beyond customer expectations. The superb plastic pellet quality can greatly increase the production yield and reduce material wastes. The high-efficiency performance of the machines can tremendously increase production capacity, allowing customers to have rapid return on investments and bring profits quickly.

In the second half of 2020, our technical team has assisted a well-known domestic material manufacturer to expand production line for the EVA compounds market. At first, the customer suffered from the limitation of the factory site and had no expectations for the possibility of setting up a new production line. However, after on-site evaluation by the CYKF technical team, we flexibly designed a customized extrusion production line within the limited space. The feeding system and the pelletizing system are developing upwards. Of course, this work requires a plentiful of experiences in electromechanical integration, including human, machine, traffic flow lines, efficiency, and safety issues that all need to be considered. We are proud to have completed the four-story custom co-rotating twin screw underwater pelletizing extrusion line for our customer, and reserve a space for future expansion, so as to support customers' needs for increasing production capacity at any time.



Trends of Plastic Compounds and Composite Extrusion

The development of plastic compounds is quite diversified and applied to various industries.

  1. Take the automobile industry as an example. With an ascending proportion of plastics applied to the industry components, and various development of new plastic composite materials such as carbon fiber composite materials with recycable feature, , impact-resistant, high-toughness, high-strength, light-weight and low moisture absorption rate. The materials are applied to the car hood, frame, panel, windshield frame, impeller, trunk cover, etc., so that the car have lighter weight, higher strength and longer life. The nonstop evolution of electric vehicles may fulfill the vision of zero-carbon emissions for the transportation vehicles in the near future.
  2. Biodergradable materials is also highly discussed, , as its name implies, plastic material can be naturally decomposed by microorganisms and bacteria in the environment without causing pollution. In terms of various plastic applications, the packaging application has the most tremendous portion among all the others. Plastic packaging materials are used in beverage, food , or any popularization products resulting in a large amount of garbage. They become serious threats to the Mother Nature and living environment.

What is exciting is that in addition to the relevant plastic restriction orders issued by governments around the world, the industry leaders have also invested resources to improve current crisis. They not only actively adopt plastic recycling materials for new production processes also make fundamental changes in the plastics. Technological transformations have made materials more in line with environmentally friendly requirements. Thus, many new plastic compounds have developed along with them, and have been successively applied in packaging, consumer goods, footwear, construction, automobiles, trains, aerospace, wind power, etc. These non-stop innovations bring changes to the precious earth.


A Manufacturer creates mutually beneficial supply and immoral operation

CYKF has grown together with the development of plastic compounds. We face countless challenges of various new materials with our plentiful knowledge on materials and profound mechanical design technology. We expecting our excellent co-rotating twin screw extrusion system can assist companies from all over the world who want to accelerate the production and development of environmentally friendly materials. It is our duty to protect the earth we live in!