PLASTIC PROCESSING CHILLERS

Chillers for the Plastic Industry

For decades, Cold Shot Chillers has provided plastic processing chillers to hundreds of customers. Our cooling systems will satisfy your requirements with reliable temperature stability for smoother operation and higher product quality. Our line of plastic industry chillers serves the following applications.

Industrial Chillers for Blow Molding

The bottled beverage and other plastic bottle-intensive industries significantly depend on blow molding. Moreover, blow molding has been the go-to process since the advent of bottled water in the 1990s to current modern-day applications.

What is Blow Molding?

Blow molding is an industrial manufacturing process essential for creating hollow plastic parts. Manufacturers leverage this process to form plastic water bottles and other hollow-shaped plastic materials. Chillers for plastic processing are crucial for achieving high-quality products in this process.

How Are Chillers Used in Plastic Blow Molding?

The blow molding process begins with extruding a parison from a plastic injection mold closely placed to the blow molding equipment. Next, two-sided bottle-shaped metal molds come together to enclose the parison previously loaded onto a stand. Before the manufacturers cool down the parison, they inject a hollow ramrod into its center, expanding the warm plastic preform. Cooling via air or water-cooled chillers efficiently cools the molten plastic, expedites the production cycle, and improves the surface finishing of the plastic product, making it essential in this process.

Industrial Chillers for Plastic Extrusion

Temperature control is crucial to several plastic manufacturing processes, including plastic extrusion. Incorporating industrial chillers allows manufacturers to achieve adequate temperature control and relevant process optimizations.

What is Plastic Extrusion?

Plastic extrusion includes manufacturing a continuous profile of products from raw plastic in high volumes. This process is ideal for manufacturing a wide range of products, including fencing, pipe/tubing, deck railings, weatherstripping, plastic films, window frames, thermoplastic coatings, and wire insulation.

How Are Chillers Used in Plastic Extrusion?

Plastic extrusion chillers supply chilled water to cool the barrel of each extruder, keeping the melt temperature of base materials and additives within specific temperature ranges to achieve high-quality plastic products. Manufacturers typically incorporate chiller-intensive cooling towards the end of the extrusion process: cooling is vital for the resulting extrudate, depending on its shape and profile. Moreover, these chillers are necessary for accurate temperature control in plastic extrusion lines.

Industrial Chillers for Injection Molding

Using chillers in injection molding gives the operator an edge in terms of efficiency. Industrial water chiller manufacturers provide excellent units for close temperature control in injection molding. In addition, they come in various capacities and sizes to suit the unique needs of any application.

What is Injection Molding?

Plastic injection molding is the process of injecting plastic into a mold to create a solid part. This process determines the shape of the molded part after it cools and solidifies. The main injection molding process steps are injection, cooling, and ejection.

1. Injection
During the injection process, plastic granules are inserted into the injection molding machine through the attached hopper. Thermoplastic resins are then directed to the heating barrel, where frictional heating and ban heaters aid the melting process. Finally, a nozzle injects the resulting molten plastic into the mold.

2. Cooling
Immediately following injection, the molten plastic is cooled at a specific rate to allow the newly formed workpiece to harden inside the mold. Coolant cycled through the mold lowers the temperature at a specific rate and ensures that the plastic hardens quickly.

Alternatively, operators can use an injection molding chiller to provide greater cooling efficiency. Other factors that contribute to the cooling duration include the type of resin used and the thickness of the workpiece being created.

In a typical injection mold cooling system, the cooling time takes up a large part of the cycle time (up to 60%). It does not end until the molded part has solidified enough to be ejected, leaving only minimal residual plastic. This temperature can be between 392°F and 572°F and falls to about 140°F after cooling.

3. Ejection
The final step of the injection molding process is ejection. The ejector pins retract, and the molded part comes out of the mold and falls into a receiver or onto a platform.

How to Calculate Cooling Time?

Cooling time in injection molding is a critical part of the production process. It is the amount of time the molten plastic takes to solidify. An adequate cooling system is required to transfer heat from the mold and maintain a stable cooling rate, ensuring the highest quality of final products.

One of the quickest methods for estimating the cooling time is using a formula that accounts for the thickness of the part in an equation based on the effective thermal diffusivity. Thermal diffusivity estimates the transfer of heat in and out of material.

In the injection molding cooling time formula above:

  • TMELT represents the melt temperature
  • TMOLD represents the mold temperature
  • TEJECT stands for the ejection temperature
  • h stands for the part thickness
  • α stands for thermal diffusivity

Factors That Affect the Cooling Time in Injection Molding

To keep the cooling time at a minimum, three essential factors should be considered.

  • Injection material
  • Mold design
  • Part design

Injection Material

The injection molding material has a significant effect on the rate of heat loss. Bear in mind that certain materials are better insulators than others. The main properties that make for a good injection material include melt temperaturemold temperature, and distortion temperature.

  • Melt temperature – The melt temperature of a material is the temperature at which the solid phase is at equilibrium with the liquid phase at a specific pressure level. It is also the same as the freezing temperature of the material.
  • Mold temperature – The mold temperature is the temperature of the mold after it has been stabilized.
  • Distortion temperature – The distortion temperature is when a material starts to soften under a specific load.

Mold Design

An adequately designed mold can minimize the time required for injection mold cooling. Using standard methods in the design of the cool line, cooling time in injection molding can be minimized.

Part Design

The design of the part or product also determines the cycle duration. Fabricating thicker parts is usually avoided since it increases the cooling time during the production process. This is because the density of a product determines how quickly its temperature rises and falls.

Cold Shot Chillers Has the Plastic Industry Cooling Solutions You Need!

Are you looking for high-performance chillers for your plastic industry processes? Look no further! Cold Shot Chillers provides a broad range of water-cooled and air-cooled chillers with close temperature tolerance to ensure the excellent quality of final products. Over the years, we have helped tens of thousands of customers.
Please contact us online today for more information about our high-performance chiller units for your plastic processing needs.

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