Maintenance, the others’
 

In the pervious two tips we discussed tools and how too. Lets now talk about our refrigerators, as I like to call them.  These units are the auxiliary equipment that we tend to forget about until they stop working. Much like the refrigerator at home...until the milk or pop is warm we don't do anything.

Grinders, now here is something we all use to save monies by reusing our scrap.   Are the blades set up on a sharpening schedule? What are the conditions of the belts, screen, and safety switches. Is the grinder numbered so we can put this in the maintenance log? Is the product produced from this grinder of adequate size, shape and minimal fines?
The point is that we need to know what this grinder is set up for? Is it set for hard glass filled materials or soft rubber like materials?  Not all grinders are created equal, but more important is what you are producing contaminating the good resin you are adding it too?

Mold temperature controllers, and auxiliary chillers, are they on a schedule. Do you have them numbered and cataloged? When was the last calibration, both for temperature and flow? Do all the gauges work? What type of fittings do we have, what is the fluid composition if using a chiller?

Dryers we have discussed, so we will leave that one alone.

The suggestions following are that and though we all overlook things we cannot at this point in the game tend to do what has been common in the past, time is money.

1- Number and catalog the auxiliaries
2- Place a nameplate on the side… explaining for example: a grinder may have type of materials that can be ground, screen size, and blade type. For the mold heater maybe the horsepower of the pump, water flow and what delta P on the pressure gauge should be.
3- Place a calibration, and or repair sticker on the unit, thus someone knows when it was last serviced and checked.
4- Set up the units on a regular inspection basis.

There really is nothing more frustrating than to set up a tool and find that the mold heaters don’t work or can’t reach the proper temperature. Now everyone is scrambling to swap out from some other process and this all takes time. The same for grinding materials in that yes they do reduce the size to something that now fits into the throat of the machine but how many fines do we have and what is the size in comparison to the virgin material if in fact we are blending?

The benefit of doing only a little of the above is that we now can generate or have generated a list of what we have. From the list we know our capabilities and limitations, thus when the opportunity to purchase new equipment arrives we can by comparison now base our decision on facts as to what we need.

Thanks for the time…

Steven L Silvey
Sr. Technical Service
ADC-GP