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A Quick Guide to Cooling Towers for Plastics Processing
What is a cooling tower? A cooling tower extracts heat out of process cooling water and pushes it into another medium, usually air, so that the process cooling water is cooled and ready to be recirculated. How do cooling towers work? In plastics processing, cool process water is pumped out...
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What’s the difference between humidity and dew point? And, why is “low dew point air” so important to resin drying?
Let’s start with humidity: Humidity describes moisture or water vapor that is contained in air. The weight of water present in a cubic meter of air is known as its Specific Humidity. Few people use that measure however. It’s much more useful to discuss Relative Humidity, which compares the actual...
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Puller drive motor technology—What is it and why does it make a difference?
Although the puller unit is located at the very end of an extrusion line, it has a tremendous impact on the stability, consistency, and quality of extruded products. Pullers, and more specifically their drive motors, play a primary role in regulating the speed at which the extrusion moves and this,...
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Who’s got the most efficient dryer of all?
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who makes the most efficient dryer of all?” Good question. Any self-respecting manufacturer or sales rep is likely to give you essentially the same answer: “We are the energy leaders. No dryer performs like ours. My dryer is the most efficient dryer of all.” Obviously,...
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Charting a course to increased uptime? Start here.
Consider the support that your primary production equipment requires: Resin pellets are fed from a storage silo or surge bin through a conveying system (vacuum pump, control system, valves) to a receiver. Then, the resin moves to a gravimetric blender, where it receives the right color and additives, and on to...
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Can you leave conveying problems in the dust?
I regularly hear from processors who are generating large amounts of resin dust—sometimes hundreds of pounds each week. They collect it, shift after shift, from the dust collection bins near their conveying system’s vacuum pumps. Those producing black-colored parts might be able to utilize some of this wasted resin dust...
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What does pellet size have to do with drying performance?
Resin manufacturers typically provide recommendations for the temperature and length of time required for resin drying. Between two samples of the same hygroscopic material of equal weight, however, differences in the physical size and shape of resin particles mean that one of the samples may dry more quickly than the...
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Why Proper Drying is So Critical, and How the Wrong Drying Equipment can be a Liability
The average plastics processor has a small fortune tied up in auxiliary equipment and plant facilities, and often even more in engineered materials. And, the value of keeping the long-term trust of your most demanding customers? Priceless. If you consider the fact that improper drying can have a negative impact...
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Gaylord Tilters, Sweepers: What’s the Difference?
Plastics processors have long relied on a simple technology, a pick-up lance or wand, connected to a vacuum system, to draw material from Gaylord Tilters. Just put the wand into the material and, when needed, turn on the vacuum to draw material to the destination. But as the material around...
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What would you do if? Solving three head-scratching equipment problems
Plastics processors know that it’s wise to be careful with a buck. Experience teaches if you can eliminate a problem with preventive maintenance, it is money well spent, since unplanned repairs and downtime cost about 10 times more than planned maintenance. But maintenance programs aren’t perfect and equipment problems arise...
By Jim Fisher 
By A.J. Zambanini 
By Ernie Preiato 
By Brian Dowler 
By Doug Brewster 
By Chad Stover