Extruding Plastic & Metal in One GoApplications and Manufacturing of Hybrid Extrusion Profiles

Traditional Co-Extrusion If one material doesn’t meet all technical

requirements, it is combined with another material to yield further functions

Usually soft and hard thermoplastics

However there are many applications which require the combination of plastics and metals,

e.g. cables, hinges, spoilers, frames, ...

Surface Coating A common solution is the coating of the core

material with thin layers, either sprayed or glued

Usually soft and hard thermoplastics

But what if the extruded thermoplastic profile needs to have a metallic look or provide metal properties?

Hybrid Extrusion

Hybrid Extrusion Combining thermoplastics and metals during the

extrusion process is called ‘Hybrid Extrusion’

Hybrid Extrusion – Why? This new approach to material engineering has

made it much easier to provide materials with a cool touch

Chrome- or aluminum glance and combinations of stiff and soft properties

E.g. conductance, magnetic attraction, and stiffness - all of that in a cost effective way

Several new fields of application

Hybrid Extrusion – How?

1. One base layer – the thermoplastic, e.g. PVC, TPU, ABS

Granules fed into hopper, melted in screw path

2. Forcing of the material through a die & cooling it

3. Roll forming follows (different possibilities here, for details see the free whitepaper): apply even pressure This is the trickiest part which requires experience to

avoid surface damage

4. Cutting of the material

Hybrid Extrusion – Avoid mistakes

It is important to consider a couple of factors before getting started: Design: Can extrusion do the job? Material: Which materials are suited? Processing: Which die architecture makes sense? Line design Process & quality control

Contact us To find out how Hybrid Extrusion works in detail, you can get

Meldon’s free whitepaper here:www.meldon.eu/whitepaper/hybrid-extrusion

Contact usFor further questions, you can also contact our experts at Meldon

Peter LubbersConsulting Project Manager Product Development plubbers@meldon.nl

Hans GessleinTechnical Sales Engineer hgesslein@meldon.nl