Cutting Scrap Rate by Enhancing Melt Quality

A Custom Screw Design from Xaloy? Reduces a Medical Packaging Manufacturers Scrap Rate to 1%

Pristine product quality is essential when producing medical products. Maintaining superior melt quality is critical, and running with a non-homogenized or unmelted resin can cause several problems, including poor product quality. The melt quality is affected by multiple factors, including improper screw design, resin sticking in the screw channels, improper barrel temperature profile, inconsistent feed stock, and feed stock bulk density differences. A suboptimal screw design, not tailored to the specific resin and application, is the most common cause.

THE CHALLENGE

A medical packaging manufacturer in the eastern United States was experiencing air entrapment in the middle layer of their 3-layer bottle line, causing high scrap rates and undesirable process conditions. They were processing polyamide (PA) with a 45mm 23:1 single-flighted screw. Reaching out to Xaloy, they asked for a solution to ensure satisfactory product quality while allowing them to return to the original process parameters.

Luckily, Xaloy had the right solution for them. [click to continue reading...]