Last month, a consultant from an injection molding company in South Carolina, specializing in product development and small parts molding, reached out to us to evaluate the cost-effectiveness & overall value of Asaclean Purge Compounds (compared to current purge they were using, Slide Purge Compound).
The goal of this project was to reduce costly downtime resulting from color streaking when doing polypropylene (PP) and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) changeovers, particularly when purging hot runner tooling. He told me: “I recall testing a sample some years back and actually recommending Asaclean Purging Compounds to one of my customers. We have now expanded our in-house molding and are dealing with much more colorwork. Our machines are 30T and less, so we don’t use a lot of material, but the time for color changes with our consumer products could certainly stand some improvement.”
Based on my years of extensive purging experience for this type of application, I already had a couple of potential cost-effective solutions in mind. However, to help him troubleshoot it was critical to spend about 15 minutes brainstorming with him. I wanted to: 1) get more specific application information; 2) give him a better understanding on how to process the mechanical-type Asaclean Purging Compounds; and 3) most importantly benchmark what his current overall purge costs were. This way, he would have a tool to help him measure and compare “cost per purge” for each purge method and ultimately implement a cost-cutting preventative purge program!
After providing a free sample of Asaclean UP Grade sample for his LDPE trial, he wrote, "First test for going from black to natural LDPE was very impressive; we’ll be doing a hot runner color change next week.” When comparing the performance of each purge method, he reported that he needed about 20% less UP Grade for the test, machine downtime was reduced by 60%, and reject rate went down by 40%!
If you’d like more information on how ASACLEAN Purging Compounds can help you help your company lower downtime and scrap rates at your thermoplastic processing plant, contact me.
Ben Moore Technical Sales Representative, self-proclaimed Purge Guru
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