State-Of-The-Art Overlay and Decorative Paper Treaters, 1998 Plastic Laminates Symposium Proceedings

New products like laminate flooring require special treating technique and technology. State-of-the-art treaters are equipped with split ovens and coaters. Application systems for “Liquid overlay” for high wear resistant surfaces are still under development. High-efficiency air flotation dryers, directly gas fired increase the performance of modem impregnation lines up to 75 m/min (246 ft/min). Catalytic exhaust air incinerators and automatic resin preparation units, are part of an integrated system. When laminated boards are manufactured, overlaying by decorative paper films is the most common technique. Paper impregnation for high pressure laminates @FL) and direct overlayed boards (MIX) is known for many decades and the paper impregnation technology, in principle, is still the same considering penetration and full impregnation of the papers by a synthetic resin followed by a drying process. However, a state-of-the-art 1997 treater is much different from the machines used some thirty years ago because of a much higher and different requirement level due to product changes and developments. The requirements on a modem decorative paper and overlay impreg- nation machine, built in 1997 are the following:

-wide product range
-wide paper weight range
-different paper widths
-high productivity
-raw material savings
-high quality products
-waste reduction
-easy to operate, clean and maintain

including good machine control
-environmental solutions
-automated resin preparation systems.