Milan - Machinery manufacturer Dilo has reported strong interest in its presentation at the recent ITMA exhibition with its full line, MicroPunch needlepunching system attracting significant attention.
The line showcasing this high speed, lightweight needling technology which offers significant energy savings, ranged from bale opening to end-of-line winding.
"All visitors confirmed that the current commercial and environmental issues concerning sustainability, critical energy supplies at increasing prices, shrinking of water reserves as well as the outlook for fibre material savings should attract our utmost attention," said Dilo. "These concerns find an answer in the field of lightweight nonwovens production through Dilo’s brand new MicroPunch production technology which will become relevant when investments take place for nonwoven production in a weight range between 30 up to more than 100 g/sqm."
MicroPunch has been developed as a low-energy alternative to the hydroentangling process, largely for the production of wipes substrates and medical nonwovens with weights below 100gsm. In addition, there is no fibre loss as trimmed material can easily be recycled within the process.
Dilo’s Hyperpunch and Cyclopunch machines already operate at speeds of up to 150 metres per minute and stroke frequencies of 3,000 metres per minute.
Continuous waterjets, however, create webs with good abrasion resistance and density and to achieve the same with needling requires needle densities of between 800-900 per square centimetre. This, incredibly, is what MicroPunch can do.
It builds on Dilo’s development of high-density boards containing 20,000 needles per metre with barbs of between 20-40 microns, first introduced at ITMA in 2007.
A significant increase in that needle density has now been achieved to up to 45,000 needles per metre of board – making full lines with over one million needles conceivable.
Needle change is greatly simplified with Dilo’s X22 modules, which are mounted by sliding into the board and can be selectively changed as needed.
Dilo has all of the data from extensive testing to back up the effectiveness of MicroPunch technology, which it says can save 25% of the cost of hydroentangling a 40gsm nonwoven and 54% of the costs of producing a 100gsm product.
The MicroPunch line at ITMA consisted of DiloTemafa fibre preparation, opening by a Baltromix bale opener, carding willow and dosing opener of the latest design followed by the successful DiloSpinnbau MultiCard fed by a universal card feeder including the new IsoFeed system for reduced weight variation. IsoFeed can add the correct amount of staple fibre volume in areas of lower mass in the flock mat plane, thus correcting weight deviations and improving the overall CV value by ca. 4 %.
The very regular web mass at the end of the card allows a reduction of the average weight by approximately 10 % resulting in considerable fibre savings when a minimum weight associated with a high regularity must not be exceeded. The MultiCard was also equipped with the new variogap and speed controller which allows an optimum of gap and speed adjustments at the fifth worker and at the doffers. This is particularly important when no crosslapper is used as was the case at ITMA where the card fed the following needle punching equipment directly.
The line has since been shipped back to Dilo's research and demonstration centre were it will be used for product development and also in cooperation with customers to test their specific fibre and requirements.
The second highlight of DiloGroup’s ITMA demonstration was the introduction to its cooperation with Dell’Orco & Villani and Technoplants for RecycloLine.
This platform will see each of the three companies involved engineer and supply complete lines for the mechanical recycling of garment waste.
DiloSystems as a general contractor will coordinate the engineering of individual projects for its customers worldwide and will be offering demonstration of tearing, aerodynamic web forming, through air bonding, carding, cross lapping, needling as well as air systems engineering which is used to control excessive amounts of dust in the production lines. Dilo's contribution will also comprise end-of-line cutting, winding, palletizing and packaging.
Customers will be informed and included in the engineering process in order to decide which method of web forming and consolidation works best for their particular purpose.
Four demonstration locations in Florence, Ancona, Pistoia (all Italy) and Eberbach (Germany) are available to offer an insight into this particular technology including sampling of material from recycled fibre.
