How to choose the right purge

Quite often I hear the question what is the best purge for my factories

cleaning problem? This is sometimes a loaded question which has to be answered “with a question”.

In fact not just one question but a battery of them.

At Eko we have seen hundred’s of cases of cleaning problems, some times at the same plant two different machines are using the same resin with the same master-batch & the technician will ask sometimes in bewilderment why does one machine take twice as long to clean out than the other? This sounds like something from the Hagadah on

Pesach!

In today’s plastic technological environment where Extrusion can be mono, co or

Multi layered with or without vents, Injection Molding from the simple to the most

complicated, molds with hot runners that look like a maze with the capability of injecting different resins & colors into the same article. Blow Molding with multi

heads & multi layered extrusion.

The fun just begins because on top of this we have multiple resins & compounds sometimes used together in the same product or one after the other in production on the same machine. This means we also have to know history what has passed through the machine & what condition the machine is in.

Dead spots, worn machinery, melt pumps, torpedoes & complicated die heads add to the problems of the purging technology.

Stopping machinery for weekends, holydays or maintenance can cause a build up of burnt degraded polymer which may cause in the loss of hours of production this can

all is solved by stopping with a good purge compound in the machine.

Polymers with vastly varying working temperatures & MFI need different purging compounds to deal quickly & efficiently with. You can not purge Polysulfan, PC or

Polyamide with the same purge for ABS, PP or PE.

Correct management intervention with seminars & instruction of when & how to purge Can save time & money.

Using the wrong purging compound or using it incorrectly can cause a loss of hundreds of dollars in lost machine time, man hours & material.

Eko –plastic assists all its clients with hands on seminars in the correct usage of its

Purging Compounds.

To simplify things for our clients Eko-Plastics compiled a table with all the pertinent questions to help us choose for you the optimum purge for your needs:

What’s new from Eko Plastic?

A few of Eko-Plastic’s customers were asking if we had a purge for really cold applications, Soft & Rigid PVC for example.

We decided to take the challenge & have recently produced our new purging compound EKO-RANGE for temperatures of 140c-270c.

A mechanical purging compound which does not have any blowing agent & does

not require any soaking time, which is very advantageous with heat sensitive resins.

Eko Range has become an instant success with some of our customers who like the ease of use, results & the speed at which the Eko-Range is flushed out of the machine with the next resin.