Purging Compound Reduces Extrusion Downtime

Package film extrusion plants practising frequent material changeovers, have been successful in using a chemical purging compound to improve quality and reduce downtime.

Package film extrusion plants have been successful in using SuperNova chemical purging compound from Novachem to improve quality and reduce downtime.

One operator found that frequent material changeovers, particularly when using Eval or Surlyn, can yield gels and specks in production output - even after running scrap for two or three hours, gels and speck were apparent.

This led to frequent unscheduled die teardowns - at least once a month - and hours of lost production time.

The Application Specialists at Novachem were able to create custom purging processes to help remove leftover production material that can degrade the machinery during transitions and startup.

After analyzing the plant's needs, a site-specific regimen of SuperNova chemical purging compound was recommended.

This usually involves use of the compound before every material transition, and following each teardown and cleaning.

After using a tailor-engineered application of SuperNova chemical purging compound as recommended by the application specialists at Novachem, changeovers yielded no more gels and little or no specking after shutdowns.

Based on the typical success of custom purging processes created by Novachem's application experts, plant productivity and worker efficiency have improved dramatically.

Some plants have saved up to 12h/month on their changeovers, and have been able to avoid up to three shifts a month on teardowns.

As a bonus, there is little or no product waste due to gels or specks.

Tooling University