PC Water Bottles
- Examples of applications: Polycarbonat water bottles in different sizes
Water dispensers for cold or hot drinking water have become a familiar fixture in many offices, shops, waiting rooms and even private households. The large water bottles, usually for 5 gallons or 20 liters, are produced in different designs, with or without handle, and from different materials, depending on the requirements. The heavy glass bottles that were customary years ago are increasingly being replaced by lighter plastic bottles made of polycarbonate (PC) or polyethylene terephthalate (PET), in rare cases also polypropylene (PP) and polyvinylchloride (PVC).
As early as in the 1970s, Kautex Maschinenbau established the processing technology in cooperation with a raw material supplier and then developed extrusion blow molding machines for the production of PC water bottles.
Benefits of PC. While PET bottles are produced using a stretch blow molding process, PC bottles are extrusion blow molded. Although the price of PC resin is higher than that of PET resin, the production of PC bottles has turned out to be the more economical solution with greater bottle design flexibility.
- Example of applications: canister
Another advantage of the PC bottles is their dimensional stability after multiple washing cycles thanks to the high temperature resistance of the material. Since PC is also much more scratch resistant than PET, the bottles suffer less damage in use so that they can be reused 50-60 times while a PET bottle must be replaced after about 10-15 cycles.
Additionally, the extrusion blow molding process offers decisive benefits due to a virtually unlimited design freedom in terms of bottle geometry and easy incorporation of handles.
With its more than 30 years of experience in extrusion blow molding of PC water bottles, Kautex Maschinenbau is in a position to offer a proven machine design for high quality water bottles meeting today’s stringent requirements.
