Technidyne ACA AX-100 Viscometer

Accurate viscosity measurement for coating color quality and coater performance

When your coating color behaves unpredictably on the coater, you lose time, material, and production output. The Technidyne ACA AX-100 is a capillary viscometer designed for paper coating operations that need to understand exactly how their coating colors will perform at high shear rates – before they reach the coater.

Why shear rate matters in paper coating

Coating colors are rheologically complex. Their viscosity changes significantly depending on how fast they are sheared. Modern high-speed coaters generate shear rates above 500,000 s⁻¹, yet most viscometers used in quality labs measure only at low shear rates. A low-shear measurement can look perfectly normal even when the same coating color will run poorly, cause web breaks, or produce surface defects at production speeds.

The ACA AX-100 measures viscosity across a shear rate range up to 1,000,000 s⁻¹ – capturing the behavior that matters for coater runnability. This gives you a direct, reliable indicator of how a coating color will perform under real production conditions, without waiting for a full-scale trial.

What the ACA AX-100 helps you diagnose

Use the ACA AX-100 to quickly identify whether a coating problem is caused by coating color rheology or by base paper and mechanical factors. This distinction alone can cut investigation time significantly, helping your team focus troubleshooting efforts in the right direction.

It supports three core use cases:

Raw material quality control: Verify that incoming coating color raw materials meet rheological requirements before they enter production.

Coating defect diagnostics: When defects occur – including poor runnability, surface streaks, or web breaks at the coater – the ACA AX-100 gives you data to confirm or rule out coating color rheology as the root cause.

Coating development: New coating recipes, including water-based barrier coatings (WBBC) and other sustainable alternatives, are often more challenging to run than conventional formulations. The ACA AX-100 provides viscosity data across the full shear rate range during development, before committing to full-scale trials.

Fast measurement, simple operation

A single measurement takes less than one minute. The system uses a pneumatically actuated capillary mechanism – pressure and flow data are captured automatically, and the software calculates and displays viscosity and shear rate results on a touch screen. Results can be exported via Ethernet or saved to a USB memory stick.

The ACA AX-100 is designed for the paper coating lab environment. It measures only non-explosive, water-based liquids, operates at room temperature, and requires a standard pneumatic air supply. It runs from a standard single-phase supply of 100-230 VAC, 50/60 Hz.

Test and measurement support for paper and pulp

At Industrial Physics, we support quality, R&D, and operations experts across the paper and pulp industry with a broad range of paper and coating test and measurement solutions. Through Technidyne, we offer brightness, opacity, and optical measurement instrumentation alongside coating viscosity tools including the ACA AX-100.