In order to broaden our scope of services to our customers, in addition to our existing Contract Coating Services business, our intention is to set up a new laboratory pilot coating facility.
The specification of the new pilot coating equipment is such that the coating methods employed are the same as in our Production contract coating, adhesive coating and adhesive tape manufacturing facility located next door.
The main purpose of this is to provide a facility for customers, especially those entrepreneurial types, who can then use the equipment and resource to develop new germs of ideas into real functioning products with us.
Those ideas that subsequently become genuine business opportunities, we can easily and quickly scale-up to Production quantities on our contract coating equipment.
As far as we can tell there are only a handful of similar facilities in and around UK and Europe and it is usual that access to these other pilot coating facilities is fairly restricted. It is generally the norm that such facilities are directly linked, or at least closely tied to either raw material manufacturers, or coating & converting equipment manufacturers. Ours are totally independent and as such open to use by virtually anyone.
Trial costs are very reasonable and it is usually the case that multiple trials (say changing the flexible substrate, or coating medium, or even the coating method) can be achieved in a short time compared to that of a production coating machine. There is also the great advantage of not having to programme trials to fit in with the production, or contract coating schedule, which can be frustrating. Additionally there are considerable raw materials and energy savings to be made.
We can offer trials on:
water-based coatings
solvent based coatings
silicone adhesive coatings
adhesive and non-adhesive coatings
Subtrates can be:
paper, film, foils and textiles
The facility briefly consists of the following:
Werner Mathis (Swiss) coating & laminating line
350mm wide web width
Knife-over-roll coating head
Meyer bar coating head
2 zone dryer fed with clean-air
Laminator
Unwinds & rewinds and laminator all in clean-air booths
Fully equipped and professionally staffed test laboratory
The equipment is located in a spacious room and the building offers plenty of room for storing raw materials and coated product.
It is our intention to quickly add the following upgrades to make the facility more useful:
Hotmelt coating head
UV curing facility
Slot die coating head
Key to the success of this new venture is that we believe that we offer infinitely more flexibility than anyone else can offer.
We are also open to discussing adapting the machine to suit particular customers’ specific requirements, which we think will be fairly unique too.
For a photo of the equipment see the R&D page, or email me at paul@raleigh-coatings.co.uk and I’ll send some. |
