Rollers on the cold side of the handling systems have been made from various materials ranging from very expensive polyurethane to low cost PVC drain piping. We identified a requirement for a relatively low cost, high performance roller sleeve and developed the Blue Roller ™ for the application.
The Blue Roller ™ is manufactured from a combination of inexpensive textile fibres enhanced by impregnation with tough, yet low cost, resins. The resulting sleeve offers tremendous resilience and abrasion resistance couple with an ability to resist temperatures of 250ºC. Most sleeves used after the stretcher are limited to an absolute maximum of 150ºC. no matter what type of material they are constructed from. Sleeves with a poor resistance to temperature are easily destroyed if only one extrusion is inadvertently transferred to the cold side of the table before losing its heat.
Holding the Blue Roller ™ sleeve in place on the metal roller is achieved by
using the locking spades which were originally developed for our high
temperature range of Gold, Green and Red Roller sleeves. Replacement of worn
sleeves is a very simple operation after removing the rollers from the system.
Conversely, polyurethane or rubber faces rollers must be returned to the
supplier for recovering which can be a great inconvenience to the extruder.
Different diameters are available but all have a common wall thickness of 5mm (nominal) which allows a better opportunity to maintain a level run out as the sleeves wear down. This is important because of the increasing complexity of section shapes within the extrusion industry.
