Bulk Feeding Solutions with Custom Extruders

The Bonnot Company has a variety of custom extruders designed for bulk feeding of rubbers, both natural and synthetic, silicones, butyls and mastics. Regardless of the batch size or material viscosity, there is a solution available. If one of the company’s standard designs does not meet your needs, a custom solution is developed. Customized solutions specifically tailored to a customer’s needs are a core competency of ours and competitive advantage.

For lower viscosity silicones, butyl and mastic rubbers, the Bonnot Company offers a full line of machinery to process full batch sizes directly from mixers. Managing full batches directly from mixers is accomplished with our Live Bottom Feeder Extruder. The feed bed consists of four large diameter screws that accept the batch and process it into a perpendicular output screw for downstream operations. The bed and hopper dimensions can be customized to match the size of the batch from the mixer. The design includes independent variable speed drives on the feed and output sections which allows for very controlled throughput. The Live Bottom Feeder Extruder is often designed with temperature control zones including hollow feed and output screws, and jacketed bed and barrels. Temperature management of silicones and rubbers is key to optimizing process control. As with all the Bonnot systems, they can be configured with temperature control units (TCU), screen changers, profiling dies, various cutters and full controls if desired. Reduced intermediate material handling steps and associated labor savings from these systems generate a great ROI.

For higher viscosity silicones and rubbers, both natural and synthetic (such as EPDM), the Bonnot Company offers a line of full and partial bale extruder designs known as the RF Series. A fundamental issue that many producers and compounders face is how to introduce a full or partial bale into a process in a controlled fashion. The traditional method involves grinding, which is costly and often requires the addition of material such as talc to prevent the ground pieces from knitting back together. The company’s second-generation design can ingest a full or partial bale, depending on the extruder size, and process it in a controlled fashion into pellets or downstream equipment. The system is fully jacketed with multiple zones for temperature control. The robust design incorporates an interrupted flight feed screw (18” in diameter for the full bale extruder) to masticate the bale. A fixed rake and counter rotating packer in the feed hopper, aid ingestion. The feed screw is a pressure sensitive design which facilitates a feedback loop to automatically control the output by changing the RPM of the feed screw. The high viscosity design can manage output variation at +/- 5%. If less variation is required for the process, the addition of a screen changer and gear pump at the output can manage variation to +/- 1%. The design can be coupled to a twin screw compounding extruder for direct feed.

The Bonnot Company welcomes the opportunity to assist you with your bulk feeding needs using one of our custom extruder solutions. Please contact us if we can be of any service.