Celebratory inauguration of Brückner’s technology centre in Leonberg

Brückner inaugurated with a celebra­tion its new technology centre in Leon­berg. Günther Oettinger, CE Commis­sioner for Energy inaugurated together with Regina Brückner, Axel Pieper and many customers the new hall with the testing machine. “Our focus is for years already the development of lines which are energy efficient, re-source saving and optimally designed for our customers. Solely our productive and flexi-ble manu­facturing in Germany allows us to meet the high expectations of our customers and to supply our products rapidly and with consistently high quality” emphasiz­es Regina Brückner in her speech. “In this context we developed a completely new and energy-efficient machine generation which we put now into operation with a celebration in our technology centre at our Leonberg site and which is available for test and development purposes.” Dr. Klaus Jansen, Managing Director of the German Board of Trustees for Textile Re­search (Forschungskuratorium für Textil) presented the visitors in an interesting ad­dress the many chances and possibilities of the textile world. Which changes have to be strived at and which products must be realized to be well prepared for the fu­ture? And which fields of applications willexist in future for textiles, which materials will be replaced? Dr. Jansen showed nu­merous examples, reporting for example about adaptive sun protection with en­ergy generation, construction materials made of renewable raw materials, textile sub-strates for bio mass growing, about energy storage in fibres and textiles and last but not least about the recycling of garments and the integration of function into fibres. The guest of honours Günther Oettinger, CE Commissioner for Energy emphasized in his speech the importance and creativity of the German small and medium sized companies which provides for clearly more jobs than the big indus­try. Moreover he made clear that we will need in Germany also in future a manu­facturing industry and that we should not transfer all production-related jobs abroad. At the same time he showed a lot of under-standing for the textile com­panies in Germany which brought in an action against the EEG (German Renew­able Energy Act) contribution. It is unac­ceptable that companies do invest to reduce their own energy cost but have to pay therefore clearly more EEG contri bution. Such companies have no possibil­ity to plan and the jobs are in danger. In his opinion there are rightly doubts about the constitutionality of the EEG contribu­tion. Nevertheless he deems it important to continue in saving energy costs and he congratu-lated Brückner on the new successful machine concept which is an important support for the textile process­ing industry regarding the reduction of their energy consumption. With the con­struction of its technology centre Brückner avows clearly to Germany as a location for industry and gives his employees but also his customers and partners certain-ty. Günther Oettinger empasized further that it is important for the German industry to have tradition-conscious family-owned enterprises and praised again the consid­erable in-vestment at the company base in Leonberg. Axel Pieper explained in his speech the numerous benefits of the tech­nology centre and presented the testing machine in detail. “During the planning phase of a complex machine it is often necessary to make extensive pretests. The new line shall support our customers to develop new products, to make tests, evaluate them in our own laboratory and to de-fine the exact machine configura­tion for a later production. Together with our own tech-nologists we can thus make the bridge between machinery and pro­cess technology. Up to now such tests could be made only on laboratory scale. But in future we can make these tests in our own house and in close dialogue with customers and partners of the chemi­cal industry. In addition, the BRÜCKNER’s own testing line is an ideal basis for fur­ther product developments and optimi­zations. The technology centre offers the most different coating and finishing possi­bilities for tests on a production scale. For interested persons it is any time possible to rent the hall and the machine. In addi­tion our experienced technologists which have an extensive knowledge of the ma­chines can give valuable hints about the latest technologies. For commission finish­ers we offer to make pretests in our tech­nology centre before starting a new pro­duction. We are of course looking forward to develop new products with custom-ers and to implement new ideas.

Finishing and functionalizing with a padder

The increasing requirements regarding resis­tance (for example washing resistance, fast-ness) and functionality (for example flame protection, water repellency, antistatic) of tex-tiles requires a great number of new technologies to be developed. For this pur­pose the interaction of textile substrate, fin­ishing system and extensive machine know-how is ex-tremely important.

Application with the minimum

application process

The application with a minimum application process can save an enormous amount of en-ergy. The optimum interaction of chem­istry and machinery engineering is of con­siderable importance. For technical textiles and functional textiles we offer in our testing line the possibility of a minimum application with dosing roller or floating knife.

Coating with knife-over-air or knife against cylinder, dosing roller or rotary screen

Our testing line allows the coating of water-based pastes and stable foams as well as ap-plication technologies for full-faced and intermittent coating.

Laminating with our dry laminating calender

With our dry laminating calender we can of­fer different laminating techniques, for exam-ple for functional material composites, for the pressing of foam coating systems, the press­ing of foams for tightness, protection barriers against chemicals, vapour barriers and the connection of different substrate materials. The lamination technique will find its ap-plica­tion mainly in the field of technical textiles.

Heat-setting with the latest energy-saving dryer generation

The heat-setting process has established itself for the finishing of fabric types when cer-tain characteristics shall be positively influenced, for example to increase the material strength or to suppress the shrinking effect when heat is added. Heat-setting processes are also suit­able for the functionalizing of non-wovens. In addition, the new line offers the possibility to finish fabric with up to 270 °C, which is par­ticularly required in case of some applica­tions in the field of technical textiles. The ad­ditional process monitoring with straighteners to correct inclined or bow distortions, fabric centering units, measuring of weight per m2 and thickness allows to make optimiza-tions during the execution of the test. An exactly reproducible documentation allows in ad­dition to transfer the parameters to further processes. Our testing line can be used for manifold processes and applications with different fabric types. Contact us! We will sup-port you in your product developments.