Silgan Plastics is the largest supplier of metal containers for food products in North America and is a leading supplier of plastic containers for personal care products.

Within their manufacturing plant, three types of molding systems are used:

• Injection molding
• Injection blow molding
• Injection stretch blow molding

The plant uses PET preform molds with 72 individual cavities to produce its variety of plastic containers, lids and caps. To ensure that their molds are well maintained and in good working condition, they are regularly cleaned.

With the 72-cavity molds, products are made in 10 second cycles. After every 15,000 cycles, maintenance staff manually cleaned the hot molds in the presses, each mold taking 2-3 hours. Every 60,000 cycles, the molds were removed from the presses and given a more thorough cleaning.

Dry Ice Blasting is a more effective cleaning solution to this. Dry Ice Blasting quickly and effectively lifts off contaminants, providing a superior clean. The process is non-abrasive, non-conductive and does not produce any secondary waste.

Reduces downtime – Dry Ice Blasting is a fast process that cleans in place, with little to no disassembly required, reducing the scope of the work. As this is a dry process, equipment can immediately return to production, minimising downtime necessary. Cleaning time can be reduced from 2-3 hours per mold to under 45 minutes.

Non-abrasive – Dry Ice Blasting is non-abrasive, and so it is suitable for use on delicate equipment, as the process will not cause damage to the substrate.

No secondary waste – Dry Ice Blasting does not produce any secondary waste stream, and so time and costs associated with this clean-up is minimised.

Sustainable – Dry Ice Blasting is carbon neutral and so is a sustainable, environmentally-friendly process. 

This case study was carried out by and appeared on www.coldjet.com.