How to choose the suitable plastic extruder machine

How do you usually choose the plastic extruder machine? It is not only necessary to analyze your own needs, but also to have a good understanding of suppliers and extruders.

Before purchasing a plastic extruder machine, most enterprises have basically understood, whether to choose twin-screw or single-screw, and what kind of material needs to be produced. Specification and size”, first select the diameter of the screw, and then further select the specification and model of the extruder from the screw diameter.

screw speed

This is the most critical factor affecting the productivity of an extruder. The screw speed is not only to improve the extrusion speed and extrusion volume of the material, but also to make the extruder achieve a high output and obtain a good plasticizing effect.

In the past, to increase the output of the extruder, the main method was to increase the diameter of the screw. Although the screw diameter increases, the material extruded per unit time will increase. But the extruder is not a screw conveyor. In addition to extruding the material, the screw also extrudes, stirs and shears the plastic to plasticize the plastic. On the premise that the screw speed remains unchanged, the screw with large diameter and large groove does not have as good a stirring and shearing effect on the material as the screw with small diameter.

Therefore, modern extruders mainly increase the production capacity by increasing the screw speed. The screw speed of the ordinary extruder, the traditional extruder is 60 to 90 revolutions (per minute). And now it has generally been raised to 100~120 rpm. The high speed extruder reached 150 to 180 rpm.

If the screw diameter is unchanged and the screw speed is increased, the torque on the screw will increase. When the torque reaches a certain level, the screw is in danger of being twisted and broken. However, by improving the material and production process of the screw, rationally designing the screw structure, shortening the length of the feeding section, increasing the flow rate of the material, and reducing the extrusion resistance, the torque can be reduced and the bearing capacity of the screw can be improved. How to design the most reasonable screw and maximize the screw speed under the premise that the screw can withstand it requires professionals to obtain through a lot of experiments.

Screw structure

The screw structure is the main factor affecting the capacity of the extruder. If there is no reasonable screw structure, simply increasing the screw speed to increase the extrusion volume will go against the objective laws and will not succeed.

The design of the high-speed and high-efficiency screw is based on high rotational speed. The plasticizing effect of this kind of screw will be worse at low speed, but the plasticizing effect is gradually improved after the screw speed is increased, and the best effect is obtained when the design speed is reached. At this time, there is not only a high production capacity, but also a qualified plasticizing effect.

Barrel structure

The improvement of the barrel structure is mainly to improve the temperature control of the feeding section and set the feeding trough. The entire length of this independent feeding section is a water jacket, and the temperature of the water jacket is controlled by an advanced electronic control device.

Whether the temperature of the water jacket is reasonable is very important for the stable operation of the extruder and efficient extrusion. If the temperature of the water jacket is too high, the raw material will be softened prematurely, and even the surface of the raw material particles will melt, which will weaken the friction between the raw material and the inner wall of the barrel, thereby reducing the extrusion thrust and extrusion volume. However, the temperature should not be too low. If the temperature of the barrel is too low, the rotation resistance of the screw will be too large. When the bearing capacity of the motor is exceeded, the motor will be difficult to start or the rotation speed will become unstable. Using advanced sensors and control technology, the water jacket of the extruder is monitored and controlled, so that the temperature of the water jacket is automatically controlled within the optimal process parameter range

reducer

Under the premise that the structure is basically the same, the manufacturing cost of the reducer is roughly proportional to its overall size and weight. Because the shape and weight of the reducer are large, it means that a lot of materials are consumed during manufacturing, and the bearings used are also relatively large, which increases the manufacturing cost.

The extruder with the same screw diameter, the high-speed and high-efficiency extruder consumes more energy than the conventional extruder, the motor power is doubled, and the frame size of the reducer is correspondingly increased. But high screw speed means low reduction ratio. For the same size reducer, the gear module of the low reduction ratio is increased compared with the large reduction ratio, and the load bearing capacity of the reducer is also increased. Therefore, the increase of the volume weight of the reducer is not linearly proportional to the increase of the motor power. If the extrusion volume is used as the denominator and divided by the weight of the reducer, the number of high-speed and high-efficiency extruders is small, and the number of ordinary extruders is large.

In terms of unit output, the motor power of the high-speed and high-efficiency extruder is small and the weight of the reducer is small, which means that the machine manufacturing cost per unit of the high-speed and high-efficiency extruder is lower than that of the ordinary extruder.

motor driven

Extruders with the same screw diameter, high-speed and high-efficiency extruders consume more energy than conventional extruders, and it is necessary to increase the motor power. The high-speed 65 extruder should be equipped with a motor of 55 kW to 75 kW. The high-speed 75 extruder is equipped with a motor of 90 kW to 100 kW. The high-speed 90 extruder should be equipped with a motor of 150 kW to 200 kW. This is one to two times larger than the motor power of the ordinary extruder.

During the normal use of the extruder, the motor drive system and the heating and cooling system work all the time. The energy consumption of the transmission parts such as the motor and the gear box accounts for 77% of the energy consumption of the whole machine; the heating and cooling account for 22.8% of the input energy consumption of the whole machine; the instrument electrical accounts for 0.8%.

The extruder with the same screw diameter is equipped with a larger motor, which seems to consume electricity, but if calculated according to the output, the high-speed and high-efficiency extruder is more energy-saving than the conventional extruder. For example, an ordinary 90 extruder, the motor is 75 kilowatts, the production capacity is 180 kilograms, and each kilogram of material extruded consumes 0.42 kWh of electricity. A high-speed and high-efficiency 90 extruder has a production capacity of 600 kilograms and a motor of 150 kilowatts. Each kilogram of material extruded only consumes 0.25 kWh of electricity, and the power consumption per unit of extrusion is only 60% of the former. The energy saving effect is obviously. And this is only a comparison of the energy consumption of the motor. If the power consumption of the heaters and fans on the extruder is taken into account, the difference in energy consumption will be even greater. The extruder with large screw diameter needs to be equipped with a larger heater, and the heat dissipation area is also increased. Therefore, for the two extruders with the same production capacity, the high-speed and high-efficiency new extruder has a smaller barrel, and the heater consumes less energy than the traditional large-screw extruder, and saves a lot of electricity in heating.

In terms of heater power, the high-speed and high-efficiency extruder does not increase the heater power due to the increase in production capacity compared with the ordinary extruder with the same screw diameter. Because the heater of the extruder consumes electricity, it is mainly in the preheating stage. During normal production, the heat of material melting is mainly converted from the consumption of electrical energy of the motor. The conduction rate of the heater is very low, and the electricity consumption is not high. big. This is more pronounced in high speed extruders.

When inverter technology has not been widely used, traditional extruders with large extrusion volume generally use DC motors and DC motor controllers. Because it is generally believed that DC motors have better power characteristics than AC motors, the speed regulation range is relatively large, and it is relatively stable when running at low speed. Another high-power inverter is more expensive, which also limits the application of the inverter.

In recent years, the frequency converter technology has developed rapidly. The vector type frequency converter has realized the sensorless control of the motor speed and torque. The low-frequency characteristics have made great progress, and the price has also dropped rapidly. Compared with the DC motor controller, the biggest advantage of the inverter is energy saving. It makes the energy consumption proportional to the motor load, the energy consumption is increased when the load is heavy, and the energy consumption is automatically reduced when the motor load decreases. The energy-saving benefits of this in long-term applications are very significant.

Vibration reduction measures

High-speed extruders are prone to vibration, and excessive vibration is very harmful to the normal use of the equipment and the service life of the parts. Therefore, multiple measures must be taken to reduce the vibration of the extruder to increase the service life of the equipment.

The most prone to vibration of the extruder is the motor shaft and the high-speed shaft of the reducer. First of all, the high-speed extruder should be equipped with a high-quality motor and reducer to avoid the vibration source due to the vibration of the motor rotor and the high-speed shaft of the reducer. The second is to design a good transmission system. Paying attention to improving the rigidity, weight and quality of processing and assembly of the frame is also an important part of reducing the vibration of the extruder. A good extruder is used without anchor bolts and has basically no vibration. This depends on the frame having sufficient rigidity and self-weight. In addition, it is necessary to strengthen the quality control of the processing and assembly of each component. For example, control the parallelism of the upper and lower planes of the rack during processing, and the perpendicularity of the installation surface of the reducer to the plane of the rack. When assembling, carefully measure the shaft height of the motor and the reducer, and strictly prepare the reducer pads so that the motor shaft and the input shaft of the reducer are concentric. And make the installation surface of the reducer perpendicular to the plane of the frame.

Instrumentation

The production operation of the extrusion is basically a black box, and the situation inside cannot be seen at all, only reflected by the instrumentation. Therefore, precise, intelligent and easy-to-operate instrumentation will enable us to better understand its internal conditions, so that production can achieve faster and better results.