Product Watch: Taking care of employees and materials

In this segment of Product Watch, our look at recent machinery developments of interest to plastics processors, we report on an auto-clean blender from TSM Corp. and a new walk-in oven from Grieve for drying of resin.

Product Watch: above, TSM's new auto-clean blender, and below Grieve's walk-in dryer for resin drying.

To facilitate the demand for quick recipe changes on injection molding machines, TSM has developed its auto-clean blender. With the 'auto-cleaning' integrated feature it is possible to change from one recipe to another without any cross contamination of materials, claims the manufacturer (Dundalk, Ireland). The rapid order and color changes means the blender is no longer a limiting factor in color change; instead, the purge time of the processing unit determines the time required.

TSM has developed a 5-step control process that enables cleaning of all pellets from the entire blending system. The process entails not only automatic emptying of the hopper bins, but entire cleaning from the loader down to the mixing chamber. In addition, the 'auto-clean' blenders offer a specially designed automatic purge by-pass valve to provide a back-up material supply to the process machine. Not only are the changes fast but the auto-clean blender also does not require an operator to climb on top of the machine to clean the system.

Before material is loaded into the blender, it often needs to be prepared. On the resin drying front, Grieve (Round Lake, IL) is promoting its No. 941 unit, an electrically heated 750ºF (~399ºC) walk-in oven. Workspace dimensions on this oven measure 48" by 48" by 72".  60KW are installed in Incoloy-sheathed tubular elements to heat the unit, while a 4200 CFM, 3-HP recirculating blower provides horizontal airflow across the load.