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Game Changer Openair-Plasma® - live at Fakuma 2023

Explore the remarkable capabilities of this eco-friendly and highly efficient technology.

Learn how plasma treatment can significantly enhance outcomes in bonding, printing, painting, coating, and gasketing processes.

Why should you take a closer look at plasma technology?

Did you know that atmospheric plasma technology is the optimal solution for treating and processing plastics? Plasma specifically modifies the surface properties of this non-polar material. The result is an activated, polarized surface that can be easily printed, bonded, painted and sealed. This adaptation opens up completely new material possibilities and enables the use of solvent-free coatings and adhesives, increases process efficiency and helps protect the environment. In addition, previously incompatible materials can be combined, resulting in innovative material composites.

 

Plasma, as the fourth state of matter -besides solid, liquid, and gas-, offers numerous advantages:

  • Environmentally friendly: Our production is VOC-free and the technology is CO2-neutral
  • Gentle and effective: Improved surface properties, even with recycled plastics
  • Advanced material selection: New opportunities for material substitution
  • Quality and reliability: Increased end product quality and customer satisfaction

 

 

Learn more at our booth. Visit us at booth 1210 in hall A1 and see for yourself!

Or read on and find out what exactly happens during plasma treatment, and how is it applied in the industry.

Fakuma 2023 exhibition in Friedrichshafen

Take the opportunity to meet us!

Book your appointment now!

You can't make it to the fair?  Get in touch with us here!

The sustainable solution for bonding, coating, painting, lacquering, and printing

Visit our booth and learn how plasma works as an efficient and environmentally friendly alternative in industrial applications:

  • Openair-Plasma® is used to introduce oxygen- and nitrogen-containing groups into non-polar plastics to increase the surface energy.
  • This activation makes previously unreactive materials ready for further industrial processing.
  • It increases surface wettability and thus adhesion, which improves the adhesion of adhesives, coatings, and the printability of materials.
  • PlasmaPlus® technology is available for materials that require more than activation. Here, functionalized surfaces are created in a targeted manner.
  • With plasma applications, the plastics processing industry significantly expands its range of materials and can even combine previously incompatible plastics.

 

Plasma: How Does this Exactly Work?

Openair-Plasma® is generated with electricity and compressed air and is even CO2-neutral when green energy is used. All plasma processes are solvent-free, contribute to the environmental balance, can be used site-selectively and can be seamlessly integrated into existing production lines.

Innovative control and monitoring systems from Plasmatreat ensure high process reproducibility. Dry surface treatment with Openair-Plasma® can be carried out in a fully automated process, as an environmentally friendly alternative to harmful chemical processes. Here, the need for additional pre-treatments with chemical primers is eliminated during the activation and fine cleaning of various surfaces prior to bonding, coating, painting, or sealing. Modern, solvent-free or water-based adhesives, paints, and varnishes can then be used.

This significantly reduces the emission of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in production.

Plasma Instead of Chemicals

Using Openair-Plasma® means protecting the environment. Adhesion is really all about surface energy and surface polarity. Since nonpolar materials, and recycled materials, too, in many cases, are often difficult to wet, solvent based adhesion promoters are used to activate the surface. Consequently, adhesion promoters are frequently responsible for over 80% of the VOC-emitting substances used to achieve a reliable bond. Plasma based surface pretreatments achieve clean, highly activated surfaces which can be readily wetted with water, thereby dispensing with the need for VOCs and the associated drying and waste water disposal.

The gentle action of the plasma illustrates just what environmentally friendly adhesive processes can achieve: Structural adhesive bonds in the automotive industry, seals for electronics applications or quick, bubble-free wet labeling with high initial strength for the packaging industry – Openair-Plasma® combined with modern, solvent free adhesives can make all this possible without generating any chemical waste. The high surface energy generated by Openair-Plasma® ensures even paint distribution and optimal adhesion. Surface contamination resulting from organic impurities is safely removed. Plasma overwhelmingly reduces the reject rate in countless installations.

Substitution of materials

Openair-Plasma® enables targeted surface modifications to plastics to improve the adhesion of adhesives, paints, and coatings in industrial applications and even to bond materials together that were originally incompatible.

This opens up the possibility of expanded material selection. For example, high-cost engineering plastics can be replaced with lower-cost alternatives, reducing not only your material costs, but also energy consumption, as these alternatives can be manufactured using less energy.

Current applications from Plasmatreat's portfolio show how the use of low-cost polypropylene (PP) as a replacement for Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) not only offers economic advantages, but also has a positive impact on the environmental balance.

Examples of the effectiveness of Openair-Plasma®

Excellent print quality with water-based inks on plastic

You have certainly already noticed in your everyday life that the popularity of individually printed products is continuously increasing. This trend means that low-cost standard plastics such as PP or PE, which are also easy to recycle, are often used. However, these plastics pose particular challenges for the printing industry, as their low surface energy makes wetting and thus the printing process considerably more difficult. While solvent-based inks adhere more easily, when switching to more environmentally friendly, water-based inks and processes, it is critical to dramatically reduce the contact angle of the plastic surface, which means the surface energy must be dramatically increased.

Openair-Plasma® pretreatment significantly increases the surface energy of the substrate by introducing oxygen and nitrogen containing groups, thus significantly improving the wetting properties. The result is a significant increase in adhesion, whereby the printing ink forms a permanent, abrasion-resistant bond with the surface. In addition, Openair-Plasma® also optimizes the processing of recycled plastics. The often inhomogeneous surface, which is due to the recyclate content, can be improved by plasma pretreatment. This makes it possible, for example, to print recycled products in UV digital printing with solvent-free inks without having to resort to additional adhesion promoters. The result is more environmentally friendly products that are convincing in combination with brilliant print results.

Industrial bonding with the aid of plasma drives sustainability

Would you like to learn more about the wide range of applications for plasma? Then visit our booth and our experts will be happy to share their experiences with you.

Here are some examples of how plasma is helping to produce environmentally friendly and resource-efficient products:
- In solar technology, plasma ensures weather-resistant solar modules and in wind turbines, it ensures reliably bonded rotor blades

- In the automotive and aerospace industries, the use of plasma in bonding processes enables new material combinations for lightweight components, resulting in fuel savings and emission reductions

- In electromobility, plasma is used in battery cell production and improves, among other things, thermal management, which extends the service life of batteries

- Plasma replaces aggressive chemical process steps in manufacturing, such as electroplating

Increasing the amount of recycled material

Plasma pretreatment has also been established for many years in the automotive industry with its high quality requirements. Various manufacturers use Openair-Plasma® for surface pretreatment. This makes non-polar (recycled) plastics receptive to subsequent adhesion processes and ensures a strong bond between different, sometimes even incompatible materials.

This is the case, for example, when laminating dashboards, which are partly made of recycled materials, with powder-sintered molded skins of soft plastic. In the traditionally used flame treatment technique for the pretreatment of dashboards, all areas of the components to which no adhesion was to take place later had to be covered with thermally stable masks beforehand.

The use of Openair-Plasma® completely eliminates this work step, since the plasma jet works in a location-selective manner and, in contrast to the flame, follows the component geometry with millimeter precision using automated robot technology. In addition, plasma treatment generates very little heat, so that the treated components remain dimensionally stable and can be further processed.
Treatment of a motobike component

Improving adhesion between lacquer and substrate

Are you faced with the challenge of permanently lacquering plastic parts? Then you know that the coatings used in industrial processes have to meet additional requirements, such as resistance to moisture, contamination or solar radiation. This often requires the use of special additives, which, however, impair adhesion and require environmentally harmful pretreatments of the substrate.

Here, pretreatment with Openair-Plasma® is an efficient and environmentally friendly alternative to improve adhesion. Through the site-selective use of the plasma jet, the surface properties of the substrate are changed precisely at the points where the lacquer is to adhere, instead of pretreating the entire surface. It also eliminates the need for environmentally harmful primers.

Safe protection of sensitive electronic components by overmolding

Visit our booth and discover a world first: a joint project for the pretreatment and encapsulation of printed circuit boards in the injection molding process.

In a fully automated process, electronic components are first gently cleaned with Openair-Plasma®. They are then given an adhesion-promoting coating using the special PlasmaPlus® process and finally encapsulated with a temperature-resistant thermoset in an injection molding system. The plasma treatment and coating ensures reliable adhesion of the plastic to the circuit boards and protects them from environmental influences.

In addition to Plasmatreat (Steinhagen), project partners include the mechanical engineering company ARBURG GmbH (Lossburg), the toolmaker Siegfried Hofmann GmbH (Lichtenfels), the special machine builder Barth Mechanik GmbH (Zimmern).

Discover more about this exciting project

Our Special for You: Extend Your Process Window with Openair-Plasma® Technology an win a whole day for you material tests in our laboratories

 

No matter for which application  – we develop solutions for the pretreatment of any surface and optimize it aligned to your process.

Our atmospheric plasma technology can be a game changer with regards to adhesion characteristics, substrate substitutes or functionalization of surfaces. Find out for yourself easily online: With our worldwide "material test" service you can explore the possibilities of the Openair-Plasma® process first hand.

Give it a try: Our experienced application engineers are looking forward to working with you and find the best solution for your use case. In our well-equipped laboratories, we will pretreat your individual parts with our plasma technology and analyze the results. By clicking the button you automatically accept the conditions of participation.

We are Ready for Your Challenges

Thanks to our global network of sales, service and partners, we can support you wherever you are. Thanks to our expertise and experience, we are ready to help you meet your needs in the field of specialized surface treatment.

Do you have further questions that require a detailed explanation? Book your live appointment at Fakuma 2023 now, or use our contact form at the bottom to get in touch directly with our surface treatment experts.

With our plasma processes, we can replace old process and greatly reduce the CO2 footprint in the production process.

- Joachim Schüßler, Plasmatreat GmbH / Sales Director
Fakuma 2023 exhibition in Friedrichshafen

Take the opportunity to meet us!

Book your appointment now!

You can't make it to the fair? No problem! Get in touch with us here!

A new project? A material processing challenge? Would you like to discover the of World of our Openair-Plasma® technology? Our experts are happy to get to know you.

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