New Rotary Die and Cam Lock Design for Tubing

Guill Tool has new, simplified designs for its cam lock feature and rotary die. The cam lock is the same as supplied on the Bullet and will be supplied on additional heads, where applicable. It enables quick and easy assembly and disassembly of the crosshead, and eliminates the socket head cap screws.

By removing and replacing the internals, a different profile can be extruded in minutes rather than hours. Because the cam lock resets the internals in the right configuration every time, there's far less chance of error, compared to the assembly and misalignment issues with socket set screws. The cam lock offers several features such as: it takes only a half  turn to remove and install the deflector tip and no fastening hardware is required.

Additional features include fast tool changes (threaded retaining ring for the die and threaded tip retainer), dies remove from the front and tips from the back, tooling retainers for gum space adjustment, vacuum connections, simplified cleaning, and reduced downtime and operating costs.

Guill’s new rotary head is a simplified design compared to its previous models. By rotating the tooling in relation to the material flow, a rotary head increases the wall strength of an extrusion, thereby enabling a thinner wall with less material. Features include only rotating the die, randomizing any gauge bands or thickness variations and, in some cases, improving material properties of the end product. Various sizes of tubing can easily be accommodated with the Guill cam-lock design that reduces setup and changeover times.

Extrusion processors can realize a cost savings due to the elimination of secondary processes, cosmetic enhancement of the end product with the elimination of weld or parting lines, plus reduction or complete elimination of ovality. Typical applications for rotary heads include medical and multilumen tubing plus various high-end extrusions with interlocking layers or multiple striping requirements.