Patent ID: 8262966

Claim:
A method for cooling flat plastic products, comprising feeding plasticized plastic compound to a calender via a slot nozzle by means of an extruder and which is rolled and calibrated to a desired shape in the calender between at least two, top and bottom, smoothing rolls, after which a film or sheet produced in this way is fed to a chill section comprising a plurality of adjustable rolls and passes through the chill section until it is sufficiently cool and dimensionally stable, the chill section being in general alignment with a central region of one of the smoothing rolls, one of the rolls of the chill section pressing the flat plastic product against said one of the smoothing rolls, at least both a gap width between the rolls and speed of the rolls of the chill section being controllable by open- and/or closed-loop control, degree of wrap of the flat plastic product around a respective roll is varied by adjusting the rolls in the chill section into a mutually offset arrangement, hence increasing or minimizing cooling capacity, the gap width between mating rolls of the chill section, once specified, being held constant during an adjustment operation of the rolls of the chill section by means of an appropriate control system, whereby center axis lines of the plurality of rolls of the chill section are held parallel to one another, constant spacing is maintained between the center axis lines of each two adjacent mating rolls of the plurality of rolls of the chill section, the center axis lines of said each two adjacent mating rolls define a geometric plane, each plane thus defined being rotatable in each case about one of the center axis lines during said adjustment operation of the rolls, thereby varying an angle between adjacent geometric planes, while being in a bellows type configuration, where the planes are folds capable of unfolding relative to each other while pulled open but being connected at respective edges.