Calender-Projckt - Olbrich expands Technology Range

For a long time Olbrich have been offering all technologies for laminating, coating, printing and refining rolled goods, which customers from the floor covering and foil industries require for their production. Up to now they only had to use the machines of other makers for the manufacture of carrier foils,as Olbrich did not carry this step of production. This gap has now been closed by the development of internal expertise. The keyword: calender technology. The first big order for a 3-roller calender with a four-metre working width is currently in the design phase.

It was only logical for Olbrich as the technology leader for the refining of foils to also offer the manufacture of the foils themselves. These considerations were again and again backed up by incoming requests from the customers, asking whether Olbrich was not able to finish this step of their production as well. There were therefore enough endeavour and cause to develop their own expertise in that field, but not sufficient capacities. At the beginning of this year, in the course of acquiring necessary staff for the sales and technology departments, they were also able to attract some experts for the calender field so that the considerations could now be put into practice.

The brains behind the calender project (from left): project engineer Johannes Kamp and sales manager for the floor covering industry Johannes Klein-Heßling arranged the first order. They will receive the support necessary for further implementation from Olbrich’s new "calender team": Thomas Beck will be responsible for sales and the technical side will be looked after by Horst Dieter Kohr as project planner and Dieter Krause as project manager.

During calendering the synthetic material is transported into the gap between two rollers of the calender and rolled out under pressure and temperature to an exactly defined film, similar to rolling out dough. Calender technology is versatile, e.g. for the manufacture of floor coverings, selfadhesive products or decorative foils. Because of current product trends the first order comes from the floor covering industry and was received in July – in view of the dimensions of this project we can really talk about a bespoke kickoff in the field of competence:

the first calender will be the largest specific machine which Olbrich have built to date.