Bengaluru, February 2015: STEER, recently announced at PlastIndia that its Application Development Centre (ADC), successfully developed a process to produce Continuous Medium Glass Fibre Thermoplastics (CMGFT) on its flagship Omega platform that deploys its patented Fractional Lobe screw geometry. The platform is now available for deployment.

The platform leverages the specialised functionalities of SPE (Steer Special Elements, such as RFV (for intake); FKB (for melting of polypropylene); and OSE wave element (for wetting of glass fibre).

Dr Babu Padmanabhan, Managing Director and Chief Knowledge officer said, "The quest to replace energy intensive and heavy metal parts with lighter weight and environment friendly plastics continue to leads us to new frontiers and the advancement in compounding technology made by us is one more important step in this direction."

The ADC conducted several tests to achieve dramatic results in terms of fibre length and orientation. The compounding of the CMGFT composite was achieved with a high-flight depth, high free volume, STEER Omega co-rotating twin-screw extruder. Scientific choices of screw elements along with production process, and the control of process parameters, distinctly influenced the final fibre orientation and length.

Mr Atanu Maity, Chief Executive Officer said, "STEER's vision is to contribute to the development of Material Technology for developing and deploying innovative technologies, and enable our customers to achieve more."

The CMGFT is best for applications where PP short glass and PA short glass reinforced materials are used. For example CMGFT PP with 30% glass is better than PP 40% short glass filled grade in terms of cost and lightness. (Glass roving's are cheaper than chopped glass). Against GFPA, CMGFT is a cost effective alternative that can be used for most of the "under the bonnet" parts like radiator end caps, fan and shroud, and air in-take manifolds in automotive applications.

STEER is a manufacturer and creator of specialized components, machine systems and platforms that effectively transforms and functionalises materials in the fields of polymers, biopolymers, pharmaceuticals and food, using the core application of co-rotating twin screw extrusion.