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What’s behind the explosion in extruder productivity?
I’ve been in this business 30-plus years and continue to be amazed at the pace at which tubing extrusion technology is advancing in several areas: the ability to run extremely stable extrusion lines that offer not only much tighter tolerances, but also faster production rates, and greatly improved operator productivity. ...
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Gravimetric Feeders vs Volumetric Feeders
What's the difference between Gravimetric Feeders and Volumetric Feeders? Feeders are auxiliary equipment that dispense a measured amount of an ingredient—a resin, a colorant, or an additive—into resin entering a processing machine. The term “volumetric” refers to one way that a feeder measures and dispenses an ingredient. The other way...
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How to Manually Calculate Chiller Capacity for Your Process
If you don’t like the idea of expert guidelines for estimating process heat loads, or just plain prefer to make your own calculations about the chiller capacity your process needs, the following is definitely for you. "Old school” formulae for calculating process heat load and chiller size Start with material...
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How to Size Your Chiller: The Easy Way
Chillers come in all sizes, from enormous, plant-sized central units that can deliver 500-plus tons of cooling per hour to plug-in portables that provide a single ton of capacity per hour. So, how do you get the one that you need? To size a chiller to meet your requirements, you’ve...
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How do you maintain plastics processing equipment?
Keeping every element of a plastics processing plant running, starting with the maintenance of primary and auxiliary processing equipment, is a big challenge. And, I find that people meet that challenge in different ways. So, how do you do it? What’s your “style” of maintenance? And what does the future...
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What does a purge valve do?
A purge valve is an integral component of a vacuum material conveying system that not only provides an on/off flow of material into a conveying line, but also a way to purge that conveying line with air at the end of every material loading cycle. Air purging is vital to...
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How a Cyclone Dust Collector Works and Why You Need One
Why are dust collectors needed? Dust collectors are often needed in plastics processing facilities because conventional high-speed vacuum-conveying systems move plastic pellets and flakes so quickly that some are damaged, causing dust and other problems. Pellets of soft materials may bump on conveying tube surfaces, heat up due to friction,...
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What is bulk density?
The bulk density of plastic materials influences many different operations within a plastics processing plant. So what is bulk density, anyway? Bulk density is the weight of a material based on a given volume. In the world of plastic resins, bulk density is typically expressed in one of several ways:...
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A Quick Guide to Cooling Towers for Plastics Processing
What is a cooling tower? A cooling tower extracts heat out of process cooling water and pushes it into another medium, usually air, so that the process cooling water is cooled and ready to be recirculated. How do cooling towers work? In plastics processing, cool process water is pumped out...
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What’s the difference between humidity and dew point? And, why is “low dew point air” so important to resin drying?
Let’s start with humidity: Humidity describes moisture or water vapor that is contained in air. The weight of water present in a cubic meter of air is known as its Specific Humidity. Few people use that measure however. It’s much more useful to discuss Relative Humidity, which compares the actual...
By Ernie Preiato 
By Alan Landers 
By Jim Fisher 
By Brian Dowler 
By Doug Brewster 
By A.J. Zambanini