Plastics Facility Cleaning

Dry Ice Blasting is ideal for Plastics manufacturers because C02 delivered in a liquid frozen state and clean while molds are still hot – reducing downtime by up to 80%. Dry ice blasting allows preform plastics mold manufacturers to reduce production downtime by as much as 80%.

Our ice blast systems are able to clean mold surfaces while the mold is still at curing temperature in the press. Manufactures understand that clean mold cavities is critical to quality standards.

Removing Build-up of Plastics Manufacturing Equipment

Unwanted build-up of surface residues from either the product mix itself, mold releases or the labeling process can create various problems, ranging from product release (“knock out”) to inferior product quality and possible damage to tools from over-packing and straining. Besides maintaining the cleanliness of the molds, the dry ice blasting process also reduces and in many cases eliminates the need to disassemble the molds from the press as is done for traditional cleaning methods.

The actual cleaning process is designed to remove hardened on  plastics and debris, mold-release agents and plastic build-up.  Cleaning  mold cavities are a major concern for plastic part manufacturers. The build-up of residues from either the product mix itself, mold releases or the labeling process:

• Blow and Injection Mold Cavities
• Glue Heads And Gluers
• Packaging Equipment
• Extruder Screws
• Ovens
• Mixers

Dry ice blasting removes the waxy residues and paraffin build-up that can lead to blemishes (orange peel effect) on the bottles while the molds are hot and on-line.

The manufacturing of a polyurethane foam product used in sound dampening for autos and vans leaves the manufacturer with molds coated with an isocyanate/wax mold release. Mold release build-up eventually causes “knock out” problems, and, in extreme cases, the wax release agent becomes encased in the polyurethane foam product, making the product unusable. Dry Ice blasting eliminates this.

With dry ice blasting, a mold can be cleaned in only 15 minutes and the cavities are more thoroughly cleaned with results in 15 multiple increase in cleaning vs. traditional cleaning methods. Production up time is increased dramatically.

Dry ice blasting can clean entire blow and injection mold cavities completely and effectively. Many leading blow molding bottle manufacturers have discovered that dry ice blasting systems cut their daily mold cleaning time by about 80% simply by cleaning molds hot and in place. Today, even the back 1/3 of the blow-mold surface and the entire deep-cavity injection molds used to make test-tube shaped slugs are cleaned by dry ice blasting whereas it used to have to be cleaned by hand.