Pellets & Dust - Training & Education
Dedusting System – A problem in Medical, Automotive and Technical components.
Fine dust arises during the granulation, transport or in-plant material supply of plastic granulate. These small particles can have major implications for the end product.
This is specifically for high-quality plastic products, even the slightest component defects such as flow lines or translucent surfaces can have serious consequences.
The visible problems of dust:
- Inclusions
- Streaks
- Black spots
Non visible problems:
- Non-homogeneous material (fibre optic material)
- Fluctuating dosage time – particularly with MIM and CIM due to changes in viscosity
- Increased maintenance of dry air dryers
Causes of the problem:
- A dust particle has a very big surface in
- relation to the low weight
- A cover of air prevents the dust particle from
- melting even at very high temperatures
Where does the dust come from?
Apart from the obvious, when using regrind materials:
- Production of the virgin material
- Transportation / shipping
- In house conveying
- Regrind
Identifying the source of the material dust:
- Check material bags for dust
- By dipping your arm into the material bag, you can evaluate whether there is dust in the material.
- If there is no dust in the material, no particles can be seen on the arm
- Check periphery / auxiliary equipment
- Open the granulate dryer and check the inside wall for dust deposits
- Dryers with glass cylinders (see picture on the right) are easy to check
- Check material containers such as roll silos for dust deposits
- Dust can also be on the outside of the periphery
- Check moulding machine
- Move the material hopper via the slide rail and check the feed zone
- Checking the set drying temperature of the granulate. Brittle material tends to break up at the feed zone if the temperature is too low
- Check conveyor belt
- Checking the conveyor belt for dust deposits
- If there is dust in the area of the sprue point, it can be caused by the ejection
- sprue area
- ejector pins
However, these problems can be prevented. An excellent pellet dedusting system, such as the range from MB Engineering provides you with a plastic granulate of flawless quality, thus helping you to avoid production losses and high rejection rates.
Example:
Analysis by a customer located in Germany, based on scrap rate.
Equipment: MB Engineering – Pellet de-duster TS5
– 100 parts each test
Result: Reduction of the number of defects by 80%
Conclusion: Defects are significantly reduced by the use of dedusting units.
Contact us to find out more and book a free trial:
MBengineering: Your expert for metal and mechanical engineering