up to 80% BaSO4
and LDPE

The customer was in search of a melt pump specialist for his high wear investment project. The compound leaving the melt pump looks and behaves like cement.

eprotec  is in charge of the melt pump wear protection in applying different tool steels and coatings to the critical components.

35 – 50% glass fiber

These development started years ago with competitor gear pump. After this time high wear was severely reducing the service life down to only ~ 800 - 1.200 hours. The difficulty for the gear pump was to maintain the lubrication even with fibers against high pressure and minimizing wear in compounding Polyamide PA and Polypropylene PP.

Hence, eprotec  was asked to install more wear protected spare parts. By today the compounding company replaced all gear pumps by eprotec melt-X pumps due to enhanced service life.

6,2 t/h PVC (LVT) and 50 - 70% limestone

First there was the 1.2 t/h test in a OEM laboratory. The economical scale of the investment made the capacity to go up to 4.2 t/h.
Since the beginning the parts were protected against wear, corrosion and non-stick. One year after production start the complete compounding line was then debottlenecked up to 6.2 t/h. In addition the customer added up to 9% glass fibre, coming from recycled PVC sheet and window profiles.

Customer report:
The melt pump eprotec  melt-X 80 is the component with the least / lowest wear in the entire compounding line.

first in high speed extrusion

Early in the history of eprotec  we developed the melt-X for high speed extrusion in Polypropylene PP and Polystyrene PS application for a German OEM R&D department. All inner parts of the melt pump, like shafts and slide bearings, were redesigned to reduce as much shear and thus temperature.

By observing the high-speed field applications, we proved that there is almost no difference in temperature and wear behaviour compared to a standard speed application. Since 2015 eprotec  is the main supplier of another OEM with the same high-speed application.

postconsumer recycling, double service life

In recycling (post consumer DSD), the difficulty for the extrusion pumps is, despite the elimination of many impurities in the pre-filter, that the slide bearing lubrication is still maintained against high pressure, including minimizing wear. For eprotec  many customer contacts started with spare parts replacements for competitor pumps.

eprotec  service life of wear protected parts is twice as long compared to competitors. Today most recycling companies use eprotec  melt pumps.

fastest 10 min color change, black to white

Gear pumps are always perceived, as spoiling the change over to other polymers or colors. Therefore every single spot and space in our melt pump is optimized.

Colour change tests from black to white with a famous Italian pipe manufacturer showed an impressive result of 10 minutes at only 30% line capacity.
Change over from white to black in only 5 - 6 minutes!