Bobst has announced a K5 Vision metalliser. It can run at speeds up to 840m/min, is available in widths from 1250mm to 2450mm and can house roll diameters of up to 1000mm.
It uses Bobst’s AluBond process, which is a hybrid metal coating technology that offers better barrier properties on BOPP and CPP films than conventional metallizing processes. It promises high metal adhesion with values up to 5N/15mm and improves dyne level retention through vacuum metallization so that there’s no need for chemically treated films. It can handle a wide variety of different film types including heat sensitive films and thin gauge substrates.
This machine benefits from a new Ø600mm coating drum, which Bobst claims gives it the largest coating window in the industry. This increases aluminium collection efficiency by up to 16% resulting in less consumables, an extended boat life and a 10-15% energy reduction. The larger surface area of the drum also makes for better film cooling, which is further helped by a 2-zone gas wedge that allows better conduction of heat between the substrate and the drum and is particularly useful for heat sensitive films such as CPP and LDPE.
There’s also an Eco mode to reduce energy consumption by up to 50% by leaving the machine in stand-by with a minimal amount of energy and cooling as needed.
In some respects the K5 Vision appears to be a smaller version of the K5 Expert, though Bobst points out that the larger machine is aimed at film producers and has additional features such as Automatic Sequential Control that the K5 Vision, which is mainly aimed at the converting market, does not offer.
The new K5 Vision effectively replaces the K4000 apart from those users that want to do both standard aluminium metallization and selective metallization on a single machine – which can be done with Bobst’s SelectMet process but this is only available on the K4000.
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