This edition of Best Practices is dedicated to purging the coronavirus from our minds! No, really, this news from iD Additives Inc. came out way back when we that thought PPE might be some type of new resin, in other words, not that long ago…
But seriously, let us travel (remember that?) to Sparks, Nev., and the factory of Blackhawk Molding Co. Inc., an injection molder of caps and closures for the dairy and bottled water industry. Blackhawk needs to do frequent color changes.
"Purging and cleaning the screws on our machines is critical to our quality control," said Jason Ferguson, project coordinator at the Sparks factory.
Bruce Lundstrom, Blackhawk's plant manager, saw information about iD Additives' QuickShots in a trade magazine, and he asked Ferguson to check it out.
He went online to order a free sample from iD Additives. "It didn't take long to see the benefits of using this product," Ferguson said. "It helped make color changes much easier and dramatically reduced our downtime when cleaning the screws." Happy with the results, the company placed a large order.
QuickShots are single-dose purging compounds that come in individual packages. All an operator needs to do is drop the packets into the feed throat of the machine. According to iD Additives of La Grange, Ill., they work with all resin types on all machinery for all types of plastics processes, including injection molding, extrusion and blow molding.
Blackhawk Molding now is using QuickShots on all its molding machines and molds at the Sparks facility.