PPA’s Torque Strength Helps Eliminate Need for a Corkscrew
Canadian Plastics
Cheers! Amodel polyphthalamide (PPA) has broken into the wine industry. Solvay Advanced Polymers' high-performance resin has found a new use as a threaded anchor for a patented twist-to-uncork wine closure designed by Gardner Technologies, Inc. (N...
Cheers! Amodel polyphthalamide (PPA) has broken into the wine industry. Solvay Advanced Polymers’ high-performance resin has found a new use as a threaded anchor for a patented twist-to-uncork wine closure designed by Gardner Technologies, Inc. (Napa, CA).
The new product, called MetaCork, consists of a hard plastic capsule with a threaded interior surface, a matching plastic threaded cap, and a natural or synthetic cork fitted with a threaded anchor, made from Amodel PPA, which is screwed into the cork during the bottling process.
Twisting the plastic capsule eases the cork out of the bottle, thanks to mated threads inside the capsule and on the neck of the bottle.
According to Patrick Whelan, director of engineering for Gardner Technologies, the design of the anchor is critical to the design of MetaCork since the average breakaway torque required between the anchor and capsule to extract a natural cork is about 14.5 inch-pounds
“MetaCork is engineered to have zero failures in the field,” Whelan said. “We selected Amodel PPA because it can withstand more than twice that level of torque.”
The Amodel material used in the MetaCork is a 45% glass-reinforced grade of PPA resin. The material has very good flow characteristics, making it easy to mold the threaded anchor or other parts with complicated geometries. The processing window is relatively broad, and mold temperatures as low as 150F (65C) can be used.
Solvay Advanced Polymers, L.L.C. 770-772-8200