Home » Industry News » Plastics Industry » Tantec surface treatment technologies reduce time and wastage
GREENTECH Plastics Machinery, a major supplier, installer and servicer of premium European-designed plastics machinery, offers a range of high quality Tantec surface treatment systems to customers across the Southern and East African regions .
Choosing the right plastic ancillaries is just as important as a high quality injection moulding machine to ensure streamlined production. “As an end-to-end partner in plastic production processes, we support our injection moulding machines with best-in-class ancillary equipment to assist customers in significantly reducing time and material wastage,” says GreenTech Business Development Manager, Martin Hollinger. “We are in fact one of very few companies in the world offering all electrical surface treatment technologies.”
Danish-company, Tantec, is ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 accredited, and has more than 40 years of experience as a manufacturer of quality, high-end surface treatment products for applications in automotive, pipe, medical/life science, electronics and packaging. GreenTech supplies Tantec Plasma and Corona surface treatment systems as well as leak detection technology (LeakTEC) for the detection of a crack or pinhole in a plastic material.
Hollinger explains that surface treatment with Tantec Plasma technology offers innovative solutions to adhesion and wetting problems in many industries. “Component preparation is an important step prior to bonding, painting, varnishing and coating processes. Plasma treatment provides an economical solution for the cleaning and activation of component surfaces before further processing. Moreover, Plasma surface treatment improves wettability and adhesion of ink, glues and coatings on many different surfaces.”
According to Hollinger, PlasmaTEC-X and Vacuum Plasma are two popular products in the Tantec Plasma range.
Tantec’s Vacuum Plasma range is designed for plasma treatment of a large number of different injection moulded parts. Available with both single and multiple tray configuration, this technology offers very fast treatment times and optimum adhesion properties for downstream coating, gluing, painting, and printing applications. It is appreciated by industry for its simplicity of operation, reliability in production, and fast process speed.
Another surface modification technique, Tantec Corona treatment, optimises the adhesion properties on polymer-based materials, ensuring the bonding of the surface with printing inks, coatings and adhesives. The low surface energy of polymer-based substrates often leads to poor adhesion of inks, glues, and coatings which by nature present significantly high surface energies. Corona treatment is widely used as a successful surface treatment method in the plastic film, extrusion, automotive and medical industries.
Tantec’s leak detection technology, LeakTec, is a powerful electronic tool for non-destructive leak detection of non-conductive single layer materials, helping customers to maintain products of the highest quality. This fully automatic test is capable of detecting pin holes even smaller than 3 microns by introducing an electrical potential between a detecting electrode and an electrical ground while the plastic part itself acts as the insulator. The LeakTEC ensures full process control and traceability and is typically used in field applications to surface test moulded and welded joints in medical devices like medical tubes, containers, pipettes, cannulas and extruded film for medical bags, etc.
“With a combined experience of 220 years in the industry, our highly skilled team of technicians deliver professional customer service, backed by our strategic network of offices in Gauteng (HO), Kwa-Zulu Natal, the Eastern and Western Cape as well as in Nairobi, Kenya,” concludes Hollinger.