The market for technologies and processes for the finishing of technical textiles is constantly growing. For the area of clothing as well as for the technical domain, different variations of coated products are indispensable. Giving the products additional properties they would not have without coating is always the airm. By coating textiles with COATEMA plants, a wide range of most different materials for great demands can be covered.

The problems that might occur with classical dryers like e.g. textile tenter frames are:

• Orange peel effects
• Creation of concave or convex structures in case of foam application
• Dead zones in the drying channel
• Creation of so-called "Pinholes"
• Frequent cleaning necessary

Growing demands on coated textiles make a precise temperature and air guidance inalienable. Die Temperaturgenauigkeit einer Anlage ist exakt zu gewährleisten. Coating raw materials need accurately defined temperatures and times of exposure for the optimate drying and fixing.

Because of the a.m. problems, Coatema has once again further developed its jet dryer that has been proven and established in the coating industry for 30 years now. The result was a new patented jet dryer especially for coatings, which is also available in EEx version, if required. This dryer is called "Moduldry" and can be flexibly adapted to the customer´s requirements regarding the length of the dryer and the tenter frame system. Even versions with conveyor belt or driven guiding rollers are available. Moduldry can be used for textiles like wovens, knitted materials, non-wovens, paper, foil and specific substrates like e.g. expanded metal foils and membranes.

The main objective in a coating process is to guarantee the highest quality possible for the coated product. The quality of the coated final product is especially influenced by the three main componente of coating plant: The coating system, the dryer and the web guiding. Coatings for high-quality products require the highest quality of the drying, foaming, and the crosslinking. The Moduldry system is composed of individual 3-meter-sections, each with separated upper and bottom air. Each section is equipped with two circulation air fans and one exhaust fan. According to the necessary drying capacity, these modules can be upgraded in any order. Depending on the requirements on the drying process, the exhaust fans in the individual sections can be omitted, which is one of the main advantages of the modular drying system.

Each drying zone as well as the upper and bottom air of each dryer section can be heated with a different temperature. This is important for the coating with certain types of PVC, when the geling process is supposed to start at temperatures of approx. 150 °C and must be completed at temperatures of 180 - 235 °C. With foam PVC, the surface of the substrate is sealed in the first part of the dryer in order to facilitate the subsequent chemical process of foaming.

Coatema´s patented air nozzle system guarantees a constant and controlled air flow and temperature guide across the whole web and length of the dryer section.
Temperature deviations during the coating process may have a strong influence on the coating process as far as drying, crosslinking or geling are concerned. This is why the temperturemust be strictly kept.

Disperse or solvent-based coating compounds must dry and fix very evenly in the dryer channel. An unsufficient material treatment leads to a sticky surface, the material´s adhesive behavior and usage properties are not ideal and it will also have negative influence on the material´s durabilty. To improve the drying process, the solvent-containing air is exhausted from the bottom, which avoids the contact with the coated material surface. A special nozzle construction avoids the so-called "dead zones" and the condensation of plastisoles that might drop onto coated material, on the interior walls of the dryer.

With the Moduldry system presented above, Coatema offers its customers a drying system for versatile applications. The drying and fixing of disperse and solvent-based coating materials is as well possible as the one of PVC plastisoles. This enables the customer to react flexibly to the market´s requirements and to offer high-quality products with ideal properties.