Bandera, Macchi tout sustainability in blown film lines

By Bruce Geiselman

Two Italian equipment manufacturers, Macchi and Bandera, have been highlighting sustainability efforts and the ability of their equipment to run recycled materials.

Macchi at NPE 2024 demonstrated its latest five-layer R-POD Flex line, a polyolefin-dedicated line specifically designed for high productivity while running recycled raw materials with reduced thickness and excellent optical and mechanical properties, according to the company.

The line featured five extruders — four of which were 65mm and one (producing the middle layer) that was 105mm. The finished net film width was about 7.9 feet.

The system, while similar to a five-layer line Macchi demonstrated at K 2022, included several new features, said Matteo Spinola, Macchi sales and marketing director.

“Starting with the gravimetric [feeder] system, we have something new,” Spinola said. “This line is equipped with an automatic cleaning system. When the operator has to do a job change, he just pushes a button, and the system automatically extracts the residual granules inside the gravimetric system.”

Air jets clean the system and send leftover resin to a bin where it can be reused. The automatic cleaning system speeds up job changes and is neater than manual cleaning.

“Sometimes, you have granules falling on the floor, and after a few months or a few weeks, you have the floor full of these materials,” Spinola said.

The line displayed at NPE also included continuous flow hydraulic screen changers on not only the 105mm extruder (which was demonstrated at the K Show) but also on two of the four 65mm extruders. The continuous flow screen changers were installed on all three of the extruders running recycled resin, allowing for screen changes that do not require shutting down the line. The dirty screens quickly rotate out of position and clean screens rotate in.

“You do not stop [during a screen change],” Spinola said. “You save time, and you save money because every time you stop the line and restart it, it costs time and money or wastes material. A continuous-type screen changer is extremely important when you run PCR because with recycled material, you must change the filters more often compared to virgin resins.”

The two outermost 65mm extruders were equipped with normal hydraulic screen changers because those lines ran virgin material for the outer layers, Spinola said.

The line at NPE also included a wax drainage system on the air ring.

“Especially when you run PCR, you have a huge amount of wax that is generated,” Spinola explained.

The triple flow air ring on the line was upgraded with an integrated automatic profile control system, which can detect changes in the blown film’s profile and automatically adjust the air ring within seconds without operator involvement.

“Compared to the previous line in Dusseldorf [at K 2022], we have a motorized lip adjustment system on the cooler ring,” Spinola said. “Normally, the operator has to jump onto the stairs and adjust the lips of the air ring. The motorized lips adjustment is extremely important because you can save the position of the lips on the cooler ring and store the information in the job recipe [on the HMI].”

When an operator runs the same process in the future, he or she can simply push a button to recall the stored air ring settings.

Other features included a frost line scanner that indicates where the frost line of the bubble starts; a Centro-Freeze from Kdesign secondary cooling unit for blown film; a double-station automatic winder; an inline system for side trim recovery; the Macchi I.o.T. digital solution for production monitoring, analytics, predictive maintenance and efficiency monitoring; and the Macchi W.I.S. web inspection system for identifying and mapping film defects.

Bandera, meanwhile, demonstrated a five-layer co-extrusion line at NPE 2024.

The Techno Flex PO5 can produce a wide range of polyolefin-based films, including shrink film, print lamination film and gusseted film, according to the company.

“This is a complete extrusion blown film line for the production of film packaging,” said Andrea Gorla, marketing and communications manager for Bandera. “Today, we are running a lamination film in collaboration with Dow.”

Key features of the line included Bandera’s Trim Flex, an inline system that recovers 100 percent of the trim material and recycles it in an inline, closed-loop process, Gorla said. The system is automated and can process up to 176 pounds per hour. The scrap is processed through a twin-screw extruder and fed back into the manufacturing process.

Another key feature was the supervisory software.

“We have new HMI software completely designed by Bandera internally that is called Any Ma software, and it’s for supervisory control of the line,” Gorla said.

Benefits of Any Ma include remote assistance and monitoring.

“You can monitor all the aspects of the line anyplace you are,” Gorla said.

The software incorporates graphics, and is simple and intuitive to learn and use. Centralized management capabilities allow an operator to control all the devices and automation equipment on a film line quickly and easily. The software also allows for the storing of product recipes. It can be customized to work with a customer’s hardware configurations.

Other features of the line included a gravimetric loading and dosing system for the extruders; extruders of 65mm, 65m, 85mm, 65mm and 65mm; a five-layer co-extrusion head with a 300mm die; a dual-flow cooling ring, automatic film thickness correction control, a double calibration cage and oscillating tow bar, cutting units and a two-station winder.

GM Mattia Gambarotto leads Bandera’s recently opened U.S. headquarters in Charlotte, N.C. The building holds a sales office for the United States and Canada, a spare parts warehouse and an after-sales service office with onsite personnel.

Bandera U.S. LLC, Charlotte, N.C., 224-250-6559, www.luigibandera.com  

Macchi North America/Euro-Technical Service, Dalton, Ga., 706-529-4643, www.macchi.it