The SKZ plastics centre in Würzburg in Germany has added a low-pressure plasma system and a CO2 laser to its range of machines in the field of adhesives. This allows it to provide a low-pressure plasma pre-treatment service for its customers, alongside existing surface activation methods for plastics (such as atmospheric-pressure plasma, corona and flame treatment). In addition to activating surfaces before bonding, the new Pico low-pressure plasma system from Diener electronic offers a range of options for cleaning and coating substrates, including etching and polymerisation processes.

The Speedy 100 CO2 laser from Trotec Laser GmbH, which has an output of 45 watts, can be used for a variety of purposes, such as increasing the specific surface area of a plastic substrate by means of partial ablation, fusion, precision cutting of adhesive tapes, films and panels, marking, and exposing fibres in fibre composites.

These two surface treatment systems will be used in public research and development projects and in development assignments for industrial customers. They add the finishing touches to the range of services available for the most commonly used physical surface treatment processes in the plastics industry.

The plastics centre also offers a range of destructive and non-destructive tests and a variety of solutions for thermal and adhesive bonding of polymers.

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Low-pressure plasma system for cleaning, activation, etching and polymerisation processes.

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This CO2 laser can be used, for example, for increasing the specific surface area of a plastic substrate, for precision cutting of adhesive tapes, for marking purposes or for exposing fibres in fibre composites