I was at an extrusion customer site last week and they were not sure whether the feed system was truly gravimetric or volumetric…. Customer The system uses a scale to measure the material used when filling the hopper, but has a feed screw to meter the material to the feedthroat. The system can be set […]
Category Archives
Plastics Technology
Keeping Basic Tools at Your Employee’s Workstation…
I was at a customer site last week and we were discussing the use of math on the production floor… Supervisor The operators always seem to have trouble counting up how many profiles are on each cart. All they need to do is use a calculator to multiply the number of profiles across by the number high. note: During this discussion, I asked the […]
Feed Throat Cooling…
I just received this question via email… MM Most of the plastics raw material data sheet do not contain the Feed Zone temp. How can we keep this temp during production? My Response Since this cooling is used to prevent bridging most processor runs this temperature at or near the lowest setting. The two common […]
Another Great Use for Compressed Air Dryers…
I was in a discussion with a manager the other day. The discussion turned to material driers and the manager said this… Manager We don’t have any compressed air driers because we process a lot of nylon and we have to dry it centrally as well as at the hopper. My Comments Although compressed air […]
The First Step to Good Troubleshooting…
I was asked this follow-up question to a previous blog post… NM What is the first step in troubleshooting? My Response Personally, I believe the first step in good troubleshooting occurs before a defect is made. The first step is to ‘Establish a Stable and Reliable Process’. To further illustrate this point, I recommend reading […]