 Plastic
Process Equipment
Looking for reliable
plastic process equipment?
Making plastic
products is a three phase process: heating, molding and cooling.
Before they are processed, thermoplastic materials or resins are
usually in a solid form of some kind, i.e., as a pellet, granulate,
film or sheet. In order to mold them into marketable products, they
must first be heated to their molten temperature. When soft and
melted, they can then be manipulated (injection molded, blow molded,
extruded, etc) to a new shape. When resins are molded into their
new shape, they have to be cooled to become solid. To accomplish
all of this, a lot of heat energy has to be extracted from the resin,
the plastic process equipment and any other machinery involved in
the molding process.
At
1st Choice Chillers, we are concerned with the final stage of the
plastic process: cooling. Depending on how fast your process is,
the environment in which the process takes place, and the quality
of plastic resin being molded or extruded, the cooling process can
take two forms.
- In
larger plastics processing plants, there is usually a centralized
process water cooling or chilling system. Pipes circulate the
cooling water through the plastics machinery and subsequently
the warmer return water back to the central cooling unit. These
centralized chilling and cooling systems can either be refrigerant
process water chillers or the forced air type, more commonly known
as air blast coolers, depending upon the temperature of water
required.
- A
smaller processing plants, on the other hand, might use portable
chillers that are located next to a plastics processing machine
to provide individual machine cooling.
According
to the laws of thermodynamics, heat energy can only travel from
a hotter object to a colder object. Heat cannot travel in the reverse
direction, i.e. from a cold object to a hot object. All process
cooling chillers are based on this simple principal of heat transfer.
What Types Of Plastics Processes need Water Cooling or Chilling?
Most molding technologies require cooling for the plastic process
equipment, i.e., injection molding, sheet extrusion, blow molding
and flim blow molding. They also require cooling for molding equipment.
Only the sheet extrusion and flim blow molding processes require
cooling for the products themselves.
Cooling
Plastics Processing Equipment
Most plastics processing machines use hydraulic systems to control
the machines moving parts. The hydraulic pump motor becomes hot
when operating under load and heat from the motor will transfer
to the oil via the motor shaft and pump casing. Further heating
of the oil will result from the friction caused by the flow of the
hydraulic oil through the valves, pipes and cylinders. All hydraulic
oils have advisory maximum operating temperatures, so hydraulic
oil cooling is one of the functions of plastics process cooling
systems to ensure that the hydraulic oil is maintained at its optimum
working temperature.
Cooling Plastics Products
The extrusion process has a water bath or spray system in which
the hot plastic being extruded is immediately immersed. The bath
or spray is connected to a chilled water system which creates the
necessary heat transfer to solidify the plastic. In the plastic
blown film process, the air blown into the bubble can be chilled
by passing it across a finned heat exchanger, which is supplied
with chilled water. The air cooling or chilling system can have
the effect of improving the clarity and quality of the film and
speed at which it can be produced.
If
you're worried about your chiller breaking down and costing you
money for lost production and costly repairs, our chillers are the
answer you're looking for. Finding a reliable chiller for your molding
process is difficult when there are so many low cost imported chillers
flooding the market. While it is tempting to think that you are
saving money, a low price is often a compromise on reliability and
quality. A low cost chiller might appear to be cheaper, prettier
to look at, with a nice outer shell or cover, but most are not built
to last, are unreliable, easily damaged, and hard to fix. Don't
settle for less than the best. If you're looking for a quality designed
chiller that is durable, reliable, easy to install and service,
then you've come to the right place.
Read about our injection molding chillers
at Plastics
Machinery and Auxiliaries
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