Dow invests in new equipment

The new equipment includes:

• Nordson Coating and Lamination line designed to help evaluate the processing performance of hot melt adhesives and to prepare samples for adhesion testing. Key applications are in health and hygiene, such as non-woven top sheet and back sheet lamination, roll goods and pressure sensitive adhesives.
• Co-rotating twin-screw extruder (25 mm) combined with a flat-slit die and three-roll calender for direct extrusion of flexible membranes. Key applications include roofing and waterproofing membranes, flooring, automotive skins, noise vibration dampening and artificial leather.

“The Performance Plastics Innovation Center will now house some of the industry’s most advanced testing facilities for our products in adhesive and flexible membranes,” said Pierre Burelli, EMEA Commercial Director, Dow Elastomers. “We see our lab as an extension of our customers’ technical capabilities. We have the ability to develop and test products simultaneously with them, and, in some cases, we can offer our lab to customers who may not have these testing capabilities in-house.”

“This application-dedicated equipment offers capabilities that will help us develop solutions faster based on Dow polymers which address specific market criteria and industry demands. For membrane applications, we now have the ability to produce real life structures, to demonstrate the highly flexible performance of solutions based on Versify, Engage or Infuse elastomers from Dow and test against some of the most stringent of industry standards like fire performance,” said Kurt Kronawittleithner, EMEA R&D Leader, Dow Elastomers. “In addition, for hot melt adhesive applications our new testing equipment can be used to determine overall performance on a variety of substrates with multiple application modes, demonstrating the powerful bonds you can achieve with Affinity GA and Infuse Elastomers.”