Until the eighties, compounding of new polymer formulations was performed on “small” laboratory extruders, for which at least a few hundred grams of polymer was needed. For testing the properties of these new polymers a pilot line was needed to synthesize such large quantities. This made new developments in polymer materials very tedious, time consuming and costly.

Micro compounding refers to the mixing of polymer formulations in the melt on a very small scale, typically several ml. The advantage of the use of a micro compounder for R&D is significant: it gives faster, yet reliable results with much smaller samples and at much less costs, thus speeding up the innovation process in polymer material R&D.
Xplore was and is the front leader in these micro compounding and shaping instruments.

Xplore started in the 90s to develop and build unique processing instruments for the R&D department of a commodity and engineering plastics company (DSM). In the last decade our focus successfully broadened to many more customers, markets and applications. This resulted in innovative new developments in instrument design and a broad portfolio of screening tools for material formulation development.

Since March 2014, Xplore became a fully independent, privately owned company, officially named Xplore Instruments BV. This enables us to be even more dedicated to our core business: helping our R&D customers by developing, (custom) manufacturing and marketing the best micro processing and post die shaping instruments in the world. 

Our core competence, designing unique quality instruments, has now an additional dimension: we design together with our customers innovative instruments on demand in a short period of time. This helps our customers to become even more competitive in the field of polymer material developments.

Due to the fact that Xplore Instruments BV rapidly expanded in 2016, we moved to a new building. This building and its environment fits better to the core activities of Xplore Instrument BV; being a high quality polymer processing instrument company.

The new premises is still in the vicinity of the Brightlands Chemelot Campus, where Xplore Instruments BV was located before and is closer to the main railroad station of municipality of Sittard-Geleen. Furthermore Sittard railroad station has also a direct connection to Schiphol International Airport.

The current strong relationship with the Brightlands Chemelot Campus will of course be maintained and by future efforts from both sides further enhanced.

In short, we are available for you with our screening instruments to fully support you in all your formulation development challenges.

We are at your service!