INNOVATION | SUSTAINABILITY
disassembly of heavy traditional blades takes a lot of time, is difficult and not without safety risks. The characteristics of the U&G blades represent a great advantage for users who may have to sharpen the blades of the granulators very frequently, he says. “CMG disposable blades are not applicable to a typical design of the traditional cutting chamber, but only ours with its proprietary geometry,” Santella says. They can be used on large granula- tors (with outputs of over 1,000 kg/h), “where they find the right place in terms of productivity and cost reduction.”
Above: Granulator cutting
chamber with U&G blades from CMG
and fines, from scrap parts, says Dave Miller, General Manager, Size Reduction, at Conair. “If you already own size reduction equipment, the single best way to ensure the quality of regrind material is a well-maintained granulator, which entails periodic inspection, sharpening, and re-gapping of the rotating and stationary knives,” Miller notes. “Worn or misaligned knives and worn-out screens are the top causes of poor granulator performance and poor-quality regrind. “If you are considering new size reduction equipment, you can maximize the return on your investment by making sure to consider all the variables in a scrap-reclaim system. These include material characteristics, part dimensions, part density, throughput needs, and regrind sizing.” Miller also advises considering questions about
future applications for the same equipment, such as: What if I need to relocate the equipment to another line? What if part size or density were to change? What if materials are especially abrasive? What if scrap volume increases? “Be sure to conduct tests to validate perfor- mance with actual production scrap,” Miller says. “Based on the results, you can modify equipment configurations before the purchase.” Giorgio Santella, General Manager of another
granulator and shredder manufacturer,CMG, says: “Manufacturing systems have profoundly changed, and we can also see this in the recycling field, which if yesterday was essentially aimed at the disposal of waste, is today assimilated within a circuit linked to the circular economy, aimed at re-use, with treatment methods that are therefore very different from those of a decade ago.” The company has just launched U&G disposable
blades. Made of a special steel, they are very light, and last longer than traditional blades. “They can be disassembled and replaced easily and quickly, with maximum operator safety,” says Santella. By contrast,
28 INJECTION WORLD | July/August 2019
“Our U&G disposable blades, with their very small dimensions, installed on the N60-100, S60- 160, EV616 and EV916 models, each weigh 300 g, with a clear reduction in weight and an increase in the operating period between the replacement of the blades – which takes less than an hour,” Santella says. The worn blades are then recycled. Piovan Group says it has been investing in developing complete turn-key systems to recover plastics, in line with its concentration on sustainabil- ity concepts. A representative says: “A great contribution that Piovan Group is giving to a more sustainable use of plastics is putting customers in the position to be able to process recycled materi- als with the same performance, the same quality of the final product and the same reliability as when they are using virgin granules. “This can be done only with deep understand-
ing of the characteristics of regrind and recycled materials. There are many details in the configura- tion of the feeding, dosing and drying systems that at the end of the day can really make the differ- ence, in terms of profitability and reliability of customers production process.”
Dealing with dust
It almost goes without saying that regrind materials have a much greater dust content. This has several implications. For example, special filtering devices have to be included to keep under control the need of cleaning and periodic maintenance; the generation of further dust has to be avoided using feeding systems that allow the control of the material speed inside the conveying lines, like Piovan’s Varyo series of vacuum conveying units; de-dusting units have to be included as a prelimi- nary step in the process. Materials in flake form are also critical in terms of handling. Piovan Group provides a complete range of equipment for this specific purpose. Special slide gates, pneumatic bridge breakers, suction boxes pneumatically operated that works by batch are just few examples of these dedicated solutions.
www.injectionworld.com
PHOTO: CMG
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