Technology at Fakuma 2017 Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the Fakuma show will be held from 17-21 October in Friedrichshafen, Germany. Organised by P.E. Schall, it will set a new record this year with more than 1,800 exhibitors from 37 countries participating over a space of 915,000 sq ft. Materials • Kraiburg TPE will highlight a new development it promoted at Chinaplas this year, a new type of TPE for use in consumer electronics, for soft velvety surfaces and adhesion to polar thermoplastics as well as mechanical properties. • Teknor Apex Company will build a 15,000 sq m facility in Germany, increasing the manufacturing capacity of custom compounder PlasticTechnologie-Service (PTS), which it acquired last year, and establishing a new European centre for plastics R&D. Ground breaking will take place by next year and it will start up by 2019. The PTS/ Teknor Apex production activity now located at nearby Steinsfeld will be relocated to the new site in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, along with sales and marketing operations currently in Tauberzell. It will focus on TPEs and engineering thermoplastics (ETPs). • Sweden’s Hexpol will present its Dryflex TPEs for automotive interior applications such as floor mats, cup holder liners, fascia mats and HVAC components, boasting low fogging and low odour performance, including grades with results ≤ 3 in odour standards, such as VDA 270. For medical applications, new grades of Mediprene allow for solvent bonding of connectors, when applying solvents such as cyclohexanone. Meanwhile, Dryflex Green TPE family, with biobased content over 90% (ASTM D 6866), is targeted at household products, sports equipment, construction profiles and automotive mats. It has been range expanded to include softer grades, from 15 Shore A to 55 Shore D.
Hexpol will feature its Mediprene TPE grades for solvent bonding in medical applications
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OCTOBER 2017
• A 50:50 joint venture involving Germany’s BASF and South Korea’s Kolon Plastics, Kolon BASF innoPOM, is building a new production plant for polyoxymethylene (POM), with a capacity of 70,000 tonnes/year, in Gimcheon. Touted as the world’s largest production complex for POM, it is scheduled to start operating in 2018. BASF says its customers are able to view the first samples of the new products labelled with the suffix “AT”, produced at Kolon’s existing plant, which will be identical to those that the new joint venture plant will produce. The first commercial quantities are also already available. • Dow Performance Silicones, a unit of DowDuPont Materials Sciences, will introduce a new technology based on the heritage Dow Corning silicone platform, for bi-axially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film production. The new slip additive provides a solution to common challenges in processing BOPP film for packaging production, surpassing standard organic slip agents in terms of performance, says the US firm. It is non-migrating across film layers and delivers stable slip performance over time and under hightemperature conditions. Further, the new product can help control costs, adds Dow. It will also highlight the 43-821 flame-retardant additive that is compatible with PA6 and PA66 compounds, and that allows a reduction in the loadings of organic phosphorous flame retardant additives with the same fire safety performance. Another new highlight is MB25-502 masterbatch for optimising throughput of high mineral-filled PE compounds used in wire and cable insulation and jacketing. • Leonhard Kurz will be presenting novel backlit surface designs, using an automotive door trim as an example. Kurz will show its patented backlit Besides design with depth effect surface finishes, multicoloured designs with a special depth effect will