Clean Extruders are Essential!

Cleaning the barrel, screw and nozzle plays a vital role in maintaining the efficiency of the extruder, which is essential for ensuring high-quality outputs and reducing downtime.

One of the key factors in achieving this is the use of a Purging Compound. These specialized materials are designed to clean the extruder’s barrel, screw, and nozzle, removing degraded polymer material from previous production runs ensuring better product quality and consistency. Purging agents are designed to clean the barrel and screw without the need to disassemble the machine, thus saving time and money. There are three main types of purging compounds, mechanical, chemical and hybrid.

The mechanical type uses abrasive agents to scrub away contaminants, they physically remove debris as they pass through the barrel. If you don’t have a suitable purging agent to hand, you can also use polypropylene as a medium temperature scrubbing material.

The chemical type use a chemical reaction to break down and debris attached to the barrel and screw.
They are particularly useful for clearing carbonized material and are often used for thorough purging after material or colour changes.There is also a hybrid type available, which uses a combination of both of the above.

Purging agents are designed to clean the barrel and screw without the need to disassemble the machine, thus saving time and money. There are three main types of purging compounds, mechanical, chemical and hybrid.

Determining how to clean your extruder is dependent on whether you’re using high-temperature thermoplastics or lower temperature polymers. With high temperature materials reside in the barrel, degradation occurs rather quickly, they tend to adhere to both the barrel and screw, which may in turn cause a barrel jam. But if you proactively clean your extruder with the correct purging agent, you should save a lot of time and effort.

Here are a a list of companies that manufacture purging agents:

Asaclean

https://www.asaclean.com/blog/how-to-pick-the-best-purging-compound-for-your-extruder

Dugdale

https://www.dugdalepvc.com/en/category/purge-compounds

Chem-Trend – Ultra Purge

https://chemtrend.com/purging-compounds/

Dyna-Purge

https://dynapurge.com/using-dyna-purge/suggested-purging-procedures/extrusion-profile-shutdown-startup/