Denser artificial grass from Promix Solutions and STC Spinnzwirn
ARTIFICIAL grass is a product in ever-increasing demand, being low-maintenance and water-resource conservative. Promix Solutions AG and STC Spinnzwirn GmbH have developed a process enabling the production of more voluminous artificial grass blades.
The filaments and tapes for the grass blades are manufactured on special fibre extrusion lines from STC. Monofilaments or tapes made of polyolefins are produced via an extrusion process, then cooled in a water bath and mechanically stretched, heat-treated, and wound onto spools. The fibres produced are tufted together with a backing fabric to form an artificial grass mat. The more blades and the thicker the individual blades are, the denser the grass.
The STC fibre extrusion line is equipped with Promix Microcell technology. A precise amount of environmentally neutral gas is added to the melt during the extrusion process. The gas-laden melt is homogenised using a special cooling mixing technique, and the gas is dissolved completely. The melt temperature is lowered and stabilised. As the melt exits the spinneret, extremely fine microcellular bubbles form within the fibres. The challenge lies in controlling cell formation to achieve a highly uniform cell structure as the filaments must be drawn by a factor of 4-10 without any fibre breaks.
Promix MICROCELL technology integrates well into STC spun yarn fibre systems, allowing the systems to operate reliably at the same throughput. Depending on the size, the system produces between 100 and 600kg of fi bres per hour. The grass blades produced in this way are 10-20% thicker than conventional artificial grass fibres. During weaving, this results in a denser grass carpet, or for the same grass density, a 10-20% reduction in raw material usage.
The new technology helps protect the environment through plastic consumption reduction. This and its more natural appearance will contribute to increasing the use of artificial grass.
