On 14.02.2017 Ms Karolina Głogowska gave a talk on Micro-extrusion process at the Lublin University of Technology. Constant progress in science leads to developmental changes in technology. One manifestation of those changes is the introduction of new, improved machinery, equipment, tools and technologies into the production process which can be used to manufacture better quality products with new, hitherto unknown functionalities. This progress has not left unaffected the polymer processing technology, in which one of the trends is to miniaturize both equipment and products. Examples of miniaturization include processing procedures such as micro-injection moulding or micro-extrusion performed using micro-injection moulding machines and micro-extruders.
Micro-extrusion is the process of obtaining microtubes of a simple or complex cross section which are used for high-precision transfer and protection of different kinds of media. In this process, it is possible to obtain tubing of interior diameters and wall thicknesses as small as 0.1 mm and 0.05 mm, respectively. Micro-extruded tubing such as micro catheters and peripheral intravenous cannulas are applied in micro-fluidics, pediatrics and micro-analytics. The present work reports the results of granulometric tests of micropellets produced by micro-extrusion with cold pelletizing as well as strength tests of microrods of different diameters. The experiments were performed using a standard twin-screw extruder and low-density polyethylene.
