FEATURE Drying, Curing & UV
Taking conventional drying techniques to the wider manufacturing world
Recently named ‘Exporter of the Year’ at the UK-based Excellence in Business Awards
at the end of last year, Spooner Industries has been continually developing its range of industrial ovens, dryers, coolers, provers, air turns, stabilisers, oxidisers and solvent and energy recovery equipment. Operating from its purpose-built premises
in West Yorkshire, the company exports custom designed products worldwide. Here, Spooner’s sales manager, Lee Fairhurst, chats to Converter about how Spooner aims to lead the way in the drying and curing sector. “As we design all our equipment bespoke to customers’ requirements, every product we make has the latest innovations as specified by our customers,” he says. “Whether their requirements are for energy efficiencies, high speeds, low running costs, small footprint or hygiene standards we can provide a solution. Alongside our highly trained engineers, customers can conduct trials in Spooner’s test centre in Yorkshire. The test centre is continuously used to develop our technologies but can also be hired out exclusively and confidentially for our customers’ more sensitive projects.” One recent development for the drying and curing sector is Spooner’s new HPS (high performance SpoonerFloat) nozzle. This has been specially developed to provide extremely high drying rates with
stable flotation of lightweight porous webs. Conventional flotation nozzles are unable to work with these types of webs.
Further cost-saving equipment The company has also recently developed an electronically synchronised parallel lifting for its converting dryers, and this has already been used on a few projects. The advantages of this lifting system are a significant cost saving for the customer as there are minimal shafts and gearboxes required. This also results in a reduction in the guarding required for the dryer – another cost saving for the customer. “Over the last few years, health and safety concerns have caused the market to slowly move away from solvent-based coatings and opt for water-based alternatives,” Fairhurst continues. “Having said this, there are converting processes which require the solvent-based coatings as water-based are ineffective. This is one reason why Spooner formed a partnership with American-based Anguil. Anguil provide environmental systems to destroy the VOC’s produced in solvent-based processes, provided as a bespoke Spooner package. “UV curability has recently been used as opposed to traditional thermal curing dryers for products like sticky back release paper, where a thin layer of silicone is applied and UV is used in favour of its low-
cost energy usage. Unfortunately this is not available for all products yet, but looking to the future it could become an option.” He adds that traditionally customers would go to an OEM to supply their entire line, but more and more are now realising that the drying stage of the process is rather significant and are conducting in-depth research into who will supply their dryers. For this reason, quite often this is where customers come direct to Spooner, the company says, so they can conduct trials and develop the equipment to be tailor made for exact requirements.
Identifying new market areas Looking ahead to the future, Spooner says it would like to target the carbon fibre sector by developing its technologies towards these specific drying techniques, after having already provided carbon fibre dryers for OEMs for several years. “I would predict a spike in demand for carbon fibre when it comes to new designs within the aerospace industry as places, spacecraft and helicopters are now all being designed with carbon fibre components and structures along with the automotive industry,” says Fairhurst. “When this happens Spooner will be offering the most energy efficient carbon fibre dryer.”
T: +44 (0)1943 609505 /
www.spooner.co.uk
18
February 2016
www.convertermag.co.uk
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