PEEK, Ultem, Polysulfone, Amodel, Fluoropolymers (to name a few), or any high-viscosity resin for that matter are extremely tough to transition. Whether it’s a material change, color change, or a shutdown, removing any of these resins effectively usually involves excess time, scrap, cost, and in some cases, a manual teardown and clean.
We don't usually explicitly push products at this blog, but for super-engineering resins, we happen to offer the best-performing purging compounds available for high temps. Meet Asaclean PF and PX2. Both are unsurpassed in cleaning performance and can be used in injection molding, profile, tube, wire, compounding, and other types of extrusion. Both are mechanical purges that do not require a soak time.
PX2 is glass-filled for high scrubbing abilities. (Not recommended for shutdowns.)
PF does not contain glass and is an equally effective cleaner that can be used on shutdowns and in hot runners or hot manifolds.
Recently I was contacted by an injection molder processing PEEK and Ultem. On Black to White color changes the screw had to be pulled and manually cleaned which took 2-3 hours on a small tonnage machine. Using PX2 they were able to perform the color change on the fly in 20 minutes without having to change heats or pull the screw.
The same molder used a UHMWPE as a shutdown purge which did reasonably well but left some PEEK and Ultem behind causing startups to take hours due to contamination. Using PF on shutdown completely removed the production materials getting him up and running within minutes on startup saving time and scrap.
Ready to reduce your production downtime to protect your profits? Learn more about how purging compounds and process efficiency work in tandem.
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