Aston, Pa. — Maguire Products Inc. introduced a pneumatically operated device that is deployed inside one of the hoppers in a gravimetric blender to accurately dose regrind, recycled plastics and other ingredients that tend to obstruct flow through the dispense valve of the hopper.
Maguire's new bridge breaker is available for its three largest blender series that have throughput capacities of 5,000 kilograms per hour (11,000 pounds per hour) and the capability of blending up to 12 ingredients.
The bridge breaker consists of a hopper insert that directs material straight onto the dispensing valve and a rotary device that operates automatically while the dispense valve is open. The device rapidly pulses between clockwise and counterclockwise movement, enhancing material flow through the dispense valve.
The hopper insert provides a vertical alternative to the sloping wall of the hopper and can be retrofitted in any blender currently in operation. To make up for the space occupied by the insert, the complete hopper assembly includes an extension to accommodate the desired quantity of material.
"The new bridge breaker addresses the growing demand for recycled content in plastic products and the increasing use of regrind as a means of reducing production costs," Frank Kavanagh, vice president of sales and marketing, said in a news release. "More and more processors have been finding it a challenge to keep such materials flowing consistently. In fact, we developed the bridge breaker to help one of our customers solve a problem with trim scrap."
Maguire's three large-capacity blender families — the 1200, 2400 and 3000 series — blend up to 12 ingredients using a variety of removable hopper and feeder configurations and numerous dispensing devices. The blenders handle raw materials in different forms, including regular pellets and regrind, bulk powders, flake and ingredients that are especially bridge-prone, such as wood flour.
After all ingredients are dosed into the weigh chamber, the batch falls into a mixing chamber. A microprocessor makes corrections from batch to batch, including adjustments to compensate for variations in extrusion rate or bulk density.
For more information, go to www.maguire.com.