American Kuhne: American Kuhne extends Navigator controls to extruders, pelletizers

Extrusion technology company American Kuhne has extended its XC300 Navigator controls system to pelletizing systems, the first of which was recently shipped to a leading roto-molder for recycling and reintroducing its post-industrial regrind to its primary process.The Navigator controls supervise the entire process, allowing the extruder speed and/or melt pump speed to tie directly to cutter speed, ensuring consistent pellet size and shape. Trending extruder pressures versus extruder speeds versus drive loads, along with alerts and alarms, gives the operator visibility into the behavior of the raw materials and feeding systems, said American Kuhne. Alerts to water temperature can indicate a shift in the process or an outside change that is detrimental to the quality of the pellet.High-quality pelletizing begins with control of the process, whether it is performed to densify a low bulk density product, filter out contaminates, provide homogeneity to a mixed source of materials, provide added mixing to an additive package, or for some other purpose.American Kuhne supplies single-screw extruders, extrusion systems and Steward Barrier screws custom designed to the material being processed for pelletizing-underwater, water ring or strand.