Curtain Coating for Functional Paper and Packaging Applications
The demands placed on coated paper and board products continue to increase. Today's markets require highly functional surfaces, excellent coating uniformity, cost-efficient production, and environmentally responsible manufacturing. Whether the target application is inkjet media, thermal paper, release liners, barrier packaging, or other specialty grades, the coating process plays a decisive role in determining product performance.
Curtain coating offers a unique combination of precision, flexibility and production efficiency. While the technology originated in the photographic industry, where it became the established standard for manufacturing single- and multilayer products, it has steadily expanded into paper and board applications requiring highly controlled coating structures.
Today, curtain coating is increasingly recognised as a viable technology not only for specialty papers but also for advanced packaging materials and functional fibre-based products requiring precise multilayer architectures.
A Premetered Technology with Distinct Advantages
Curtain coating belongs to the family of premetered coating methods. Unlike conventional metering systems that apply excess coating and subsequently remove the surplus, curtain coating deposits exactly the amount of coating liquid required to achieve the desired coat weight. As a result, coat weight can be accurately predicted through mass conservation principles and remains largely independent of coating rheology or application geometry.
The technology offers several significant advantages:
- Simple and accurate coat weight control
- Excellent machine-direction and cross-direction coating profiles
- Contact-free application
- No excess coating colour circulation
- Fast product changeovers
- Minimal mechanical wear
- Reduced coating defects
- Simultaneous multilayer coating in a single pass
- Potential for two-component and functional coating systems
Because the coating curtain does not mechanically contact the substrate, common defects associated with blade or roll coating systems, such as streaks, scratches, splashing, or orange-peel effects, are virtually eliminated. This contour coating characteristic also allows uniform coverage on substrates with varying surface topography.
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