For 35 years, SolveTech has been supplying extraordinarily high-precision measurement technology to the US market and this year, the Delaware-based company decided the time is right to break into Europe.
Developed by Doug Lawrence, SolveTech's proprietary measuring technology for film claims to be the best in the world for precision, stability and reliability. The problem SolveTech is having is that its technology is so advanced that many potential customers refuse to believe it, which is why Rob Lawrence, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing, has stepped in to help SolveTech prove that his father's innovation is just as outstanding as it claims to be.
SolveTech
SolveTech’s proprietary capacitance technology as shown on the BF200 Blown Film Gauge.
In addition to offering free sample testing, Lawrence videos himself taking samples to prove the accuracy of the data to customers in real time. Video is a very useful medium for communicating the precision of SolveTech's film measurement technology and the company regularly posts demonstration videos of all its devices. The videos are also helping SolveTech to promote the technology across the pond. Europe, Lawrence believes, is ready for SolveTech.
"Once people have a Profiler (Precision Profiler Thickness Gauging System) they'll wonder how they ever lived without it," Lawrence said.
Pinnacle of precision
Everything in SolveTech's portfolio is made using the same basic capacitance technology invented by Doug Lawrence and offers an economic alternative that is also more accurate than the nearest competition.
SolveTech
SolveTech Profiler product demo video.
Lawrence explained that if a cast film processor wanted continuous coverage and lined up many nuclear gauges along a plastic web, not only would such an arrangement be prohibitively costly, but the devices would interfere with one another. The alternative? SolveTech's Multichannel Array Gauge Thickness Gauging System, dubbed 'the world's highest performance on line cast film gauge', the Multichannel gauge is designed for narrow cast film webs (<1.5 meters wide) is less prone to 'flutter' effects than other gauges, offering precision down to better than 0.1 micron.
Complementing the Multichannel is a bespoke software package delivering real-time 3D web views of the film being measured, offering a true profile of the film every second allowing processors to understand the behaviour of the extrusion live.
"R&D teams like this because it means they can set their systems up quickly and get instant results," Lawrence explained.
Advanced, not inaccessible
Instant results and all-round efficiency gains sounds a lot like Industry 4.0 and Lawrence emphasised that SolveTech has always been ahead of the measurement trend curve, bringing a much higher standard than required to the industry leaving the competition far behind.
SolveTech
The MultiChannel Array Gauge offers up to 32 directly adjacent channels.
"It's the Ferrari of film gauging," he said. "You're able to do so much with it. You know you're going to get it on line and up and running quickly.
"Producers use our lab device to scan a film sample and create a profile to verify the thickness and variability of the film. The customers buying the film may want it to be plus or minus 1.5 per cent variability, for example, and the producer can present this report to the customer to prove what they're delivering. This quality check prevents them from delivering bad film which is bad for business relationships and can cost tens of thousands of dollars."
For such technical accuracy, SolveTech's portfolio is surprisingly accessible, which is something the company believes is important to ensure customers get the results they need time and time again.
"When something is advanced, that shouldn't mean it's hard to use. We like to try to make a very complex precise technology very easy to use," Lawrence stated.
"We strive to take the operator error out of the equation with easy reproducibility," he added. "That's really important in measurement science because there will be different operators using the gauge. But with the profiler, we tested it with three different operators - one who had never used the technology before - and the error was only 0.25 per cent of the measured variability. So it is extremely consistent."
SolveTech
Live 3D view of a cast film web (19 Channels)- true profile delivered every second.
The new ASTM standard
To add yet more ballast to its role as champion of transparency and reproducibility in film measurement, SolveTech is working on a new ASTM standard for measuring plastic film thickness with a non-contact capacitance gauge.
Lawrence explained that as the industry is veering towards more lightweight, sustainable products, films are getting so thin that it is impossible to guarantee their thickness with the vast majority of devices available, which are accurate to plus or minus one micron.
When dealing with ultra-thin films, one micron's difference matters and SolveTech's measuring technology is capable of meeting the levels of precision required for ultra-thin films with precision measuring down to 0.025 micron.
It is the guarantee of precise results that SolveTech is certain will appeal to the European plastics processing market, where quality is king.
"Quality is really important to European consumer and producers," commented Lawrence. "This technology is such a good fit [for Europe] because it's the best device for measuring quality. We have a green technology that's more precise. We have our niches but in those niches, nobody has technically displaced us."
SolveTech
Two runs overlaid show repeatability to ~0.1 micro.
