By Karen Hanna
College kids at a frat house might understand the impulse to throw away dishes, rather than wash them. But Bryan Whitaker, technical manager at iD Additives, probably does not. Whitaker and a colleague suggest a well-run processing shop should be investing its resources into preventive maintenance — and cleaning.
But even that approach was an upgrade, Whitaker said. “Tossing out heat exchangers was determined to be cheaper for this facility versus their previous procedure, which included caustic chemicals and rodding out the tubes (sometimes puncturing the copper and requiring sleeves to be dropped).”
Whitaker and his colleague, technical manager Dave Denzel, recently shared their thoughts about cleaning and purging as part of Plastics Machinery Magazine’s November focus on maintenance.
In addition to cleaning, Denzel stressed the importance of establishing a purging routine to maintain screws and barrels, and to reduce scrap.
Denzel said using purging compounds regularly beats the alternative — having to manually clean screws and barrels. And it pays off in the long run.
“Manual cleaning, which requires pulling the screw, will take considerable time away from production, whereas using a chemical purging compound on a consistent basis between color/material changes will reduce or eliminate build-up on barrels, screws, dies and hot-runner system, thereby increasing machine utilization and reducing downtime,” he said.
For comprehensive stories on purging and making your machinery last, check out PMM’s November issue and come back to www.plasticsmachinerymagazine.com later this month.
Karen Hanna, copy editor
Contact:
iD Additives Inc., La Grange, Ill., 708-588-0081, www.idadditives.com