Malik Engineers, Vasai have developed single screw Extruder, exclusively for producing Fibre glass reinforced Plastics (FRP) from Nylons, PBT and Polypropylene.

The addition of glass fibres in the form of chopped glass strands to the above plastics greatly improves  their performance in certain areas. FRP plastics exhibit improved and excellent properties of temperature resistance, chemical resistance, improved strength, good dielectric properties, dimensional stability, poor heat conductivity, etc. But, glass fibre is a good example of abrasive medium and needs special processing equipment for proper dispersion and mixing of compound to reap full benefits of glass fibre re-inforcement. Unfortunately, common extruders are not ideally suitable for suck tasks because addition of glass fibres accelerates wear & tear of the equipment and, moreover, due to existing design, proper compounding cannot be achieved. FRP Extruder overcomes the drawbacks mentioned above due to its specialised design enabling the production of highest quality of FRP compound.

The FRP Extruder basically a single screw Extruder with important differences in the design of the screw barrel and incorporation of a downstream double screw side feeder for adding chopped glass strands in the polymer. In addition, multiple venting ports are provided to remove any volatiles and gases from the compound for attaining highest quality of FRP compound. As usual, the thermoplastic resin and additives except chopped glass fibres, are fed to the gravity fed hopper and the glass fibres are added downstream and are properly "Unravelled" and "Wetted", in short processing length, due to the special design of screw, thus limiting wear of equipment within short length only. This also saves on maintenance and replacement costs. The unique action of screw provides a very homogenous compound at low melt temperatures, thus improving thermal and mechanical properties. The screw forces the homogenous compound through a plate drilled with circular holes to produced strands which are further cooled in water bath and continuously cut into small pellets by a Pelletiser. Good results can further be achieved if a melt pump (gear pump) is installed between the extruder discharge and die. This greatly reduces the pressure inside the barrel which further increases the life of processing equipment.

The machine is currently available in screw sizes of 65mm, 75mm and 100mm with corresponding output capacities of 40 Kgs, 70 Kgs and 125 Kgs/hour, respectively-without Melt pump installed. It is possible to increase the production rates by 35% with installation of Melt pump in the line.