Certoplast Technische Klebebänder GmbH in Wuppertal upgraded an existing adhesive coating line in order to save energy and to improve the overall efficiency of their operation.
 
Certoplast Technische Klebebänder is a company with a longstanding tradition in the manufacture of self-adhesive tapes with headquarters in Wuppertal and further production sites in the US and China. Their product portfolio includes innovative self-adhesive tapes and insulation tapes with their own adhesive formulation. Since 2002 Certoplast has DIN EN ISO 9001 and ISO TS 16949 approval and looks back to over one hundred years of experience in the production of technical tapes. The company uses only solvent-free adhesives including UV curing adhesive technology.
 
During the summer of 2015 Certoplast upgraded one of their most advanced coating lines with a new UV-curing system. To this purpose they integrated two GEW-made 130cm-wide NUVA2 UV lampheads with RHINO power supply. The two UV lampheads are positioned directly one after the other so as to achieve the maximum UV-curing effect. The integrated air-cooling, which avoids the installation of costly water-cooling, prevents the heat transfer onto the substrate and at the same time ensures as good as noiseless operation.
 
The machine is based on a proprietary coater design. The configuration is able to coat substrates up to 120cm wide and mainly applies self-adhesive coatings on plastic films, textile and paper.
 
With the installation of the NUVA2 UV systems designed by GEW, Certoplast are in a position to generate new demand and new turnover with established customers in the automotive, electrical and insulation industries since their product line now includes a much wider range of specialist tapes.
 
The decision in favour of the GEW UV system was due to the requirement that major investments go only into proven, futureproof technologies.
 
Managing partner Peter Rambusch explains: “Our clients expect us to be an efficient and absolutely reliable supplier. For this reason it was one of our main objectives to convert to a virtually maintenance-free set-up. Only GEW was able to offer us a comprehensive package of efficiency, reliability and embedded service with remote monitoring.” Additionally, the GEW package comes with the security of a 5-year warranty.
 
Indeed the Embedded Service Package gives GEW’s service engineers remote access over the internet to retrieve performance data and proactively detect parameters outside the permitted tolerances and immediately take the necessary maintenance steps even before a fault can develop. This type of preventive remote maintenance ensures that the entire UV system works at its peak performance at all times thus avoiding unplanned machine stoppages and waste of resources.
 
In addition the new UV system based on GEW’s highly efficient NUVA2 lampheads boasts particularly fast switch-on and cool-down cycles achieving considerable electricity and time savings. Peter Rambusch adds: “The NUVA2 UV lampheads together with the RHINO power supply reduce our electricity bill by over 30% while allowing us at the same time to further increase our production capacity. The initial investment is recouped in less than four years with the added benefit of faster, more stable production.”
 
GEW (EC) Limited is a world-leading manufacturer of robust, energy-efficient UV curing systems for printing and coating applications. GEW UV systems are designed for operation in the most challenging conditions and come with a comprehensive 5-year warranty unique in its industry. Besides its headquarters and factory in England, GEW owns subsidiaries in the US, Germany and India, and operates a network of international distributors worldwide.