Downgauging Plastic Film

Downgauging Plastic Film

What is downgauging?  To downgauge a film means to make the film thinner, and buyers and sellers like it because they can go green in two ways:

1. Go Green Environmentally
2. Go Green Financially

Environmentally, less material is used in the process, and this can help a lot of companies meet their goals to reduce the amount of packaging material they use.

From the other side of the equation, downgauging 5% leads to a 5% reduction in material cost.  This can be millions of dollars in polymer savings for a large producer.

How Do You Downgauge While Maintaining a Film’s Properties?

There are several options for downgauging film including going to a multilayer film structure, changing polymer types and making films more uniform.  Here is a great article talking about all of the impacts downgauging can have on material properties.

SolveTech specializes in helping producers exercise the third option, making a more uniform film.  Using SolveTech’s proprietary capacitance based technology, producers are able to measure uniformity with higher accuracy and repeatability than anything else on the market.  Since the variability will typically need to be improved, it is important to measure it and monitor it properly.

We offer both on line and off line systems for measuring the thickness of plastic film.  When downgauging, the film becomes thinner which makes them more difficult to measure.  The producer will also have less room for process variation, so it is critical that they are measuring the variability patterns in their materials accurately and that the material is profiled in every area.  One of SolveTech’s specialties is measuring thin film, and this has been a great asset to producers looking to downgauge.

The PR2000 Precision Profiler

Profile a strip of plastic film to see the uniformity of the material in the crossweb (TD) or downweb (MD) direction.  This unit delivers the highest level of accuracy and repeatability on the market.  The device can help producers downgauge by helping them measure accurately in their quality lab and by assisting production.

The BF200 Blown Film Gauge

The BF200 Blown Film Gauge retrofits to existing blown film lines.  This allows producers to downgauge using their existing blown film lines.  They can now monitor the variability profile, and make manual adjustments to the die to reduce variability.

The Machine Direction Gauging System

The MD1000 and MD2000 allow you to monitor the variability of the film in the machine direction.  SolveTech’s software and consultants can diagnose causes of machine direction variability, reducing it.  This will also typically decrease variation in the TD if the producer is using automated die control.  Using this technique to reduce the variability may open up the opportunity for a producer to downgauge their material.

Contact us today to have a technical discussion regarding downgauging your plastic film.

Downgauging Plastic Film-  Downgauge Plastic Film – Down Gauge Plastic Film

SolveTech, Inc. – 2017