Soup of The Day !

Almost every day we will post new hints and tips relating to Moog parison programmers, bottle leak testers, automatic check weighing, spin trimmers, AND occasionally 'weird stuff' that won't necessarily relate directly to the products we sell.

1. Leak tester rejecting good bottles? The biggest cause is the simplest: not getting a good seal on the containers neck. Check the condition of the 'rubber' pad. The 'rubber' can actually be Polyurethane, Natural rubber, Silicone, and occasionally sponge neoprene. The hardness varies from 30 Shore 'A' to 75

Which is the best for your application? Sponge will seal on anything but wear out too quickly. Very soft materials will not pick up poor neck finishes, so generally medium hardness is better. Polyurethane has good tear strength, but beware this material can harden in time, so don't buy more than a years supply!

2. Many blow moulding machines use the Moog 76 & 760 series servo valve for parison control. Experience has shown that Moog's 62 and 631 series valves are less dirt sensitive, less expensive to buy and service. Ask us about our exchange program.

3. LVDT transducers don't go faulty as often as you might think! Unless the wires get damaged or you bash it then the transducer might be OK. Testing is easy.

4. Cardboard is the biggest source of contamination in blow molding. It enters the system with the regrind, and all efforts should be made to prevent cardboard coming into contact with regrind. Use clean plastic 'dustbins' for storing scrap containers, tops+tails, regrind etc...

5. Regrind is as valuable as new material. For every pound of regrind you don't use, you will have to buy a pound of new stuff.

6. Servo valve problems? Check that the filter dirt alarm switches are connected - they often aren't Better still don't fix the cause of the problem, just keep sending the servo valves to us for repair - we need the money.

7. Extrusion blow moulding of large containers in PET is a pig of a task.

8. When you order a blow moulding machine give some thought to the ancillaries you will need. Don't wait until the machine arrives.

9. Thinking of buying a machine from China/Taiwan/India etc? There are some good machines, and a lot of really bad ones. If you order the machine directly from the manufacturer then you are legally the importer, and you have the legal responsibility to ensure that the machine complies with your countries safety laws. If the machine infringes any patents, it's you that will get sued, not the Chinese producer.