In all manufacturing industries, and especially plastic processing, waiting and reacting to carbon or color contamination is a recipe for draining your profits.
Many companies think of purging costs solely as the price of the purging compound they use. But this is an incomplete picture.
The time it takes to start up and begin producing quality products, your scrap and reject rates, and machine downtime are just some of the costs associated with purging, and they all have a significant impact on your bottom line. If any of these figures are too high, you’re missing out on critical cost savings.
How do you stop killing your profitability? You maximize your efficiency with preventative purging procedures.
Critical Preventative Purging Procedures
The following are fundamental components of preventive machine maintenance and purging procedures:
1. Seal Your Machine During Shutdowns
Use a heat-stable purging compound to completely seal your barrel and prevent oxygen from creating degradation and carbonization. Residual polymer degradation can delay machine startup and create unnecessary material waste. Whether during a temporary or extended shutdown, sealing your barrel is an essential element to preventing costly problems in the future.
2. Purge During Startups
After draining your sealing compound, running one or two barrel capacities of purging compound before starting production aggressively removes contamination and prevents any lingering carbon buildup. Implementing this purge as part of your startup procedures helps to minimize the time it takes to get up and running.
3. Purge Between Color And Material Changes
Whenever you change resins or materials, you must purge your machines to completely remove the previous substances and protect against color contamination in your next batch. This quick purge may be an additional step to your current processes, but the cost of including it in your procedure pales in comparison to the wasted time and materials created by rejects.
How Preventative Maintenance Impacts Your Profitability
Carbon buildup and contamination require screw pulls. Though screw pulls may be mandatory on a periodic basis, manufacturers who fail to take preventative measures will suffer from unplanned downtime and be forced to manually clean their screws far more frequently. The costly impact of machine downtime has long been documented.
But there’s another side effect of abrasive, manual screw cleaning: Over time, it slowly erodes the screw and limits its useful life. Because preventative maintenance and purging minimizes the need to take such drastic measures, it extends your screw and tooling life.
In addition, a proper maintenance program reduces your scrap rates, customer rejects and line shutdowns. Many plastic processors suffer from incredible material waste due to contamination during startup and changeovers. This is an unnecessary and avoidable cost.
You must take a preventative approach to purging procedures in order to avoid costly machine downtime and increased scrap rates. Stop killing your profitability and start taking calculated measures to maximize your efficiency.
Learn how the right purging compounds and procedures impact your process efficiency.
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