Redesign & upgrade

Euro-Stel carries redesigns and/or upgrades on many injection moulding machines and extruders. We do this when customers want to process different materials or larger volumes on their machines but are confronted with mechanical constraints. This may be because the screw diameter or L/D ratio is too small. We will check whether an upgrade to a larger size is possible, and will draw out the new components according to the machine to be built.

Research

Euro-Stel has its own laboratory extruder, with which we can perform various tests and examinations. The machine is equipped with a great number of measuring sensors. This allows us to measure numerous important extrusion process parameters. Temperature, pressure and capacity are, of course, the most important of these.

The laboratory extruder is mainly used for research on screw geometries and material behaviour. For years, Euro-Stel has been seeking even better screw geometries, which produce good yields and mixing qualities, as well as low process pressures (which also reduces wear). Several prototypes have been developed and tested. Our very successful Euro-Stel mixing screw and high-yield Euro-Stel screw are results of this research.

We continue trying to improve our geometries, and we are still testing new prototypes. Our laboratory extruder has a high-level of both heating power and cooling capacity. This allows us to freeze the molten plastic around the screw very quickly, without degradation. When we remove screw and solidified material from the extruder, we can study melting behaviour and how it runs very accurately.

We also have the possibility to carry out tests with retractable bushes, either grooved or not. And we can study various forms of grooves too. New types of plastic are on the market every day. Using tests on our laboratory extruder, we can find the most suitable screw geometry for each type of plastic.

Lots of plastic processors come to us when they are faced with problems that they cannot solve in-house. Fortunately, we can solve many of these problems, thanks to our years of experience in the plastics sector, and all the tests that we have carried out in the past. But, of course, we regularly encounter problems that are new to us too. And this is when our laboratory extruder comes into its own, allowing us to simulate the problem and find a solution through experimenting with all sorts of mechanical or parametric interventions.