About Christian

Christian holds degrees as “Bachelor Professional in Electronics” and “Master Professional in Business Management” and has been working for the company SIKORA in different positions. He has 10 years of experience in sales, marketing and service of inline measuring equipment for the European and American hose, tube, fiber, cable and wire industries. Since 2018 he has been Head of Sales for the Business Unit Hose & Tube at SIKORA.

What are SIKORA’s latest technological innovations and how are they going to improve the efficiency and quality of the extrusion and measuring processes?

Our R&D team has been quite busy lately. This year, we launched the X-RAY 6000 PRO C-PIPE^AI, a system that reliably measures layer transitions during the production of double-wall corrugated pipes. By combining a newly developed software – based on AI – with an X-ray based measuring system, a precise evaluation of the X-ray data of corrugated pipes is now possible. The system enables a precise measurement of the hill-valley outer contour as well as the most important wall-positions (corrugation, welding, inner) of the pipes. By measuring the wall thickness and eccentricity at an early stage, a fast centering is ensured, and start-up scrap is reduced. This continuous process control enables maximum cost savings and provides a continuous monitoring of the product quality.

The recently launched LM SMART also expands our broad product range. The system measures the length and speed of products, inline, without contact and with an extraordinary accuracy of 0.05%. 

What do you think is the future of measurement and control technology in the plastics industry, and how will SIKORA contribute?

Due to globalisation and digitalisation, price, performance, and aspects of sustainability are continuously compared between manufacturers, resulting in higher competition in the plastics industry. End customers are more demanding regarding monitoring and documentation but are not willing to pay extra for it. As a result, pipe manufacturers are looking for further automation to increase efficiency and reduce production costs.

SIKORA measuring equipment helps them to reach a higher grade of automation in new but also existing extrusion lines by automatic control to the minimum wall thickness, as well as a continuous monitoring of the extrusion process. The handling of the equipment is absolutely intuitive, only “at the push of a button”. Thus, there is almost no training for the operators needed and our systems measure without any presetting to assure an extremely fast start-up.

We offer measuring and control solutions, not only to save material and time, but also to continuously monitor and record the quality of produced pipes

Can you give an example of how a company has benefited from using SIKORA's innovative measurement technolog?

Of course. A well-known manufacturer of freshwater and wastewater pipes from Finland has equipped multiple lines with our CENTERWAVE 6000, a non-contact system based on millimeter waves, to measure different kinds of pipes and materials.

Thanks to the immediate feedback during production, the company was able to significantly reduce its start-up scrap. As a result, the investment in our measuring technology paid off within just a few months. Thanks to the CENTERWAVE 6000, our customer is now able to produce closer to the tolerances in a sustainable way by manufacturing economically and saving scarce resources at the same time.

Christian Schalich will be presenting on Day 1 at the Innovation and Extrusion Theatre.