You can't accuse the people at Douglas-Hanson Co. of not thinking ahead. A few years ago, when the maker of release liners and flexible-packaging laminates purchased Avery Dennison's Mentor, OH, facility, managers always had the idea that one day that plant's UV/EB coating system would be relocated to their headquarters in Hammond, WI.

"We were looking at expansion, and we'd much rather expand here," says president Jon Hanson, during a recent visit by Converting. "Having the single location is much more manageable than having multiple locations."

Today, the line—a 66-in., 6-roll silicone coater originally built in the early 1990s by Bachofen+ Meier (now Kroenert Corp., www.kroenert.com)—has undergone extensive upgrades. Housed in a new 60,000-sq-ft addition, it has been retrofitted for thermal, solventless coating, in addition to UV/EB, via about $4 million in improvements. The line joins nine other production systems for coating/laminating, flexographic printing and blown-film manufacturing.

"To grow the business, we needed more thermal, solventless capacity," Hanson explains, because unlike radiation-cured substrates, "thermally-cured silicones work with a much broader range of adhesives."

Major new subsystems on the line include a 40-in.-dia. shaftless, turreted winder with auto-splicing capabilities, and dryer controls from Polytype America (www.polytype.com); a Machine Design Service Intl. (www.mds-ahsi.com) roll-handling system; Fife CDP-01 and ProTrac 100 web guides (www.fife.com); and proprietary vacuum, coater and chill rolls. Other prominent accessories: a Dienes in-line slitting system (www.dienesusa.com); an Enercon Industries corona treater with Compak power supply (www.enerconind.com); a Teknek XCH web cleaner (www.teknek.com); and ION Industrial VAC 8002 static elimination (www.ion.com).

Of course, the line's most significant addition is its 5-zone, gas-fired, IR overhead dryer supplied by MEGTEC Systems (www.megtec.com). With air-impingement nozzles, the flotation system measures 148 ft long and uses Accuweb (www.accuweb.com) edge guides inside.

"There's probably not any other silicone-coating line with that oven length and number of zones," Hanson says, proudly. "The oven is pretty unique in what it can do with some of the thermal-solventless chemistries because of the oven length. It's going to enable us to silicone-coat very thin films, both polyester and PE, down to gauges of a half-mil."

After being moved to Hammond last July, the upgraded coater underwent qualification work on UV-cured product in December 2005. Production qualifications are scheduled this month for new thermal, solventless materials.

Douglas-Hanson sells its specialty substrates worldwide to the pressure-sensitive roll label, automotive, construction, tape and medical markets. But those customers are constantly changing as business cycles fluctuate. Case in point: The converter's sales to automotive markets made up about 18 percent of revenue in 2004; that figure is likely to be cut substantially this year.

"It's no secret the problems that GM and Ford are having that are trickling down to some of their vendors," Hanson says, "so we're more cautious about our exposure level to them. We continue to grow as a company, but we've done it in other areas, especially the graphic-arts, signage and construction markets."

The revamped thermal coater's new capability to run thin films is also helping Douglas-Hanson answer the continuing trend toward downgauging of release liners, particularly for the label and building-materials industries. "The oven is going to help us meet some of those future requests for downgauging."