Precision mixing in large dimensions

At the NPE 2018 trade show staged in Orlan­do, Flori­da from May 7 ‑11, 2018, MTI Mis­chtech­nik, a tech­nol­o­gy and qual­i­ty leader in the man­u­fac­ture of mix­ing and pro­cess­ing machines, will present its cur­rent port­fo­lio of con­tain­er-type, ver­ti­cal, hor­i­zon­tal, cool­ing, and heating/cooling mix­ers for the plas­tics indus­try. One high­light at the com­pa­ny’s booth – #W4545 in the West Hall, Lev­el 2 – is a Heating/Cooling Mix­er Com­bi­na­tion MTI Flex-line type M 2000 / K 8000 that impress­es with its out­stand­ing dimen­sions, pro­vid­ing 8,000 liters of cool­ing ves­sel capac­i­ty while mea­sur­ing over 7 m (23 ft) in length and close to 5 m (16.5 ft) in height. Direct­ly after the show, the machine is to be shipped to North­ern Pipe Prod­ucts Inc., a major man­u­fac­tur­er of PVC pipe serv­ing the Mid­west­ern USA and Cana­da. With the instal­la­tion of this sys­tem – the largest heating/cooling mix­er com­bi­na­tion MTI has ever sup­plied to the USA – mix­ing capac­i­ty will almost dou­ble at this cus­tomer’s site.
Burkhard Wulf, Area Sales Man­ag­er, com­ments: „We have been wit­ness­ing a trend towards ever-increas­ing pro­duc­tion vol­umes in the U.S. mar­ket for quite some time. With this Flex-line M 2000 / K 8000 for North­ern Pipe Prod­ucts we address the asso­ci­at­ed demand; need­less to say, the same holds true for our Flex-line M 2500 / K 8000 mod­el which pro­vides the ulti­mate in mix­er capac­i­ty. These sys­tems can deliv­er the spec­i­fied mix­tures in appro­pri­ate quan­ti­ties with­out com­pro­mis­ing on mix­ing qual­i­ty or high-pre­ci­sion recipe com­pli­ance. We are look­ing for­ward to deliv­er­ing this large-size machine to North­ern Pipe soon – a com­pa­ny which, like our own, has been a hall­mark of pre­ci­sion, accu­ra­cy and high-grade prod­ucts for decades.“
„In our pro­duc­tion we have  relied on an MTI heating/cooling mix­er com­bi­na­tion with 1,500 liters of heat­ing mix­er and 4,250 liters of cool­ing mix­er capac­i­ty for almost 30 years now”, explains Derek Han­son, Vice Pres­i­dent of Engi­neer­ing at North­ern Pipe. “In 2014, act­ing in close coop­er­a­tion with MTI, we replaced the orig­i­nal cool­er with a revised mod­el of the same type. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it was not pos­si­ble to install a larg­er sys­tem at the time as we had uti­lized the avail­able floor space opti­mal­ly already. The entire machine has been per­form­ing with high reli­a­bil­i­ty since its instal­la­tion, and when we need­ed spare parts they were prompt­ly made avail­able to us, along with the asso­ci­at­ed cus­tomer ser­vice. Still, the day came where this sys­tem’s out­put could no longer keep up with our demand. Once we resolved to install a sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er unit, it was only log­i­cal that we should go back to MTI for its imple­men­ta­tion. Togeth­er, we man­aged a solu­tion despite all the pre­vail­ing space con­straints. MTI mod­i­fied the machine’s design, build­ing it around the exist­ing steel­work, as it were. We are now eager­ly await­ing its deliv­ery and com­mis­sion­ing since this will over­come a real bot­tle­neck in our plans to expand pro­duc­tion capacity.“
The M 2000 / K 8000 is an MTI heating/cooling mix­er com­bi­na­tion rat­ed for a typ­i­cal batch vol­ume of 950 kg (app. 2,100 lbs). It can thus pro­vide more than 7,500 kg (app. 16,600 lbs) of mixed mate­r­i­al per hour. Like all MTI Flex-line mix­ers, the machine meets high­est stan­dards of mix­ing qual­i­ty even with exact­ing mix­ing tasks. Designed on a mod­u­lar prin­ci­ple, these mix­ers can be put to use in vir­tu­al­ly any appli­ca­tion because their sizes, dri­ve units and equip­ment options can be indi­vid­u­al­ly configured.
Chris­t­ian Hone­mey­er, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, adds: „It is our declared strat­e­gy to resolve even the most chal­leng­ing mix­ing tasks joint­ly with our cus­tomers, includ­ing cus­tom devel­op­ments to address high­ly spe­cif­ic bound­ary con­di­tions. It is on the basis of this approach that, over the last few years, we have been build­ing our cur­rent strong mar­ket posi­tion as a glob­al­ly lead­ing provider of mix­ing equip­ment. This also applies to the boom­ing U.S. mar­ket, where over 100 MTI sys­tems are now in oper­a­tion. The M 2000 / K 8000 unit spe­cial­ly adapt­ed to North­ern Pipe’s plant lay­out sit­u­a­tion quite clear­ly reflects our self-con­cept as a flex­i­ble, cus­tomer focused inno­va­tor in the mix­er indus­try. In fact, the appli­ca­tion range of our machines extends from vol­ume man­u­fac­tur­ing to the devel­op­ment lab­o­ra­to­ry, where they sup­port effort­less upscal­ing. We thus cov­er all typ­i­cal require­ments for batch mix­ing processes.“