Laur Silicone invests in safety, quality with new mixer

BEAVERTON, Mich.—Laur Silicone Inc. continues to invest in the safety of its work force and the quality of its silicone compounds with the $1 million purchase of a new conical twin screw mixer.

The new machine from Italy-based Colmec S.p.A.—an enclosed, designated mixing and milling device—is completely automated, a first step toward Industry 4.0 for the 11-person Laur Silicone.

"This is a big step in that direction for us," Josh Watson, president of Laur Silicone, told Rubber News. "The capabilities to add and automate ... this gives us better capabilities with our compounds."

The new mixer is expected to double silicone compounding capacity for Laur—with fewer heads necessary to operate the "eyes-on, hands-off" equipment. Since its inception in 1977, Laur has worked only in silicone.

"We don't really know (the expected capacity increase) quite yet, as we are still optimizing our efficiency with it," Watson said. "The goal is to double capacity without having to add any more shifts or any more employees."

The mixer will be safer, as well, for its ease of material handling, Watson said.

"Other mixers we have are twin-screw, but they are tilt mixers," he said. "One of the big drivers for us in investing in this new one is the safety and ease of handling of material for employees. The machine is much less labor-intensive ... we can get more throughput with the same number of operators.

"And it takes away having to mill and mix on the mill—the machine does this internally. This is why we have gone this route. You can open up the mixer, clean it ... and this increases our output and allows us to keep up with demand, maintaining the high-quality standards we have always maintained."

The quality of the compounds improves by definition, as the new mixer enables "perfect dispersion and homogeneity."

Watson noted that the machine's floor footprint "takes up more floor space than a comparable size mixer would, but not more than what the mills do."

"As two pieces of equipment in one, it is compact as far as that goes," Watson said.

Laur, considered a niche specialty silicone compounder for the aerospace, printing and transportation industries (as well as many industrial applications), typically mixes and matches equipment for different production sizes.

"We have a wide variety of equipment for different batch sizes," Watson said. "We are custom, so a lot is niche. But the varieties of equipment sizes, depending on how things play out, could see a mixer with one of our mills for one batch and a different size mixer with a different size mill setup for another."

Colmec maintains a patent on this specific type of mixing technology, i.e. conical and enclosed with milling included. Colmec also supplies machinery and equipment for extrusion line solutions.

"Others have similar products and similar designs, but this is a dedicated actual mixer, then you can attach other equipment on the other end," Watson said.

With more than 45 years of specialization and innovation at the heart of its operations, Laur "maintains superior technical expertise and formulates products to meet exact customer requirements."

Laur's ever-increasing portfolio includes several lines of standard compounds designed for molding and extrusion. Its silicone materials can be high strength, thermally conductive, flame retardant or completely customized materials to meet customer specifications.

The company also is renowned for its range of flexible packaging options designed to streamline customers' production processes, as well as the capability to provide custom small lab batch sizes and scale up to larger production quantities.

Watson noted that Laur's multi-supplier philosophy helped carry the company before the pandemic, during the pandemic—and it continues to carry the company today. But such a multi-supplier procurement plan does not mean that another supplier's product will work in a given formulation.

"Supply is really good right now," Watson said. "But once a formulation is set, we will not make those swaps. It is still a lot of work when we can't get the material. Multi-supplier does not mean that something else can work as a one-for-one drop-in replacement.

"But overall, we can get what we need in a reasonable time frame now."

He added that the new mixer "already is making a difference at our production facility."

"This investment positions us to better serve our customers and take our capabilities to the next level while maintaining the quality and consistency our customers have come to expect from us," Watson said.