Cost Saving Solutions

Purging Compounds for Color Changeovers & Contamination

Color changeovers can take a significant amount of time, especially when you need to run dark colors into lighter colors. Color contamination occurs when previous resins layer within your machine only to break off in future parts. Color changeovers and color contamination are two of the most common processing challenges we deal with. Common or not, they’re still a huge headache.

Here’s how Asaclean® Purging Compounds can help solve your issues with color.

Faster and Easier Color Changeovers

Most plastics manufacturers deal with color changes daily. Molders, extruders, and blow molders all deal with the challenges of changing from dark to light colors, and most have experienced the headaches of using blues, reds, and yellows. Regardless of your process or your end product, one thing is certain:

For color changeovers, time is money.

If your shift can reduce changeover time and reduce your scrap rate, you will dramatically increase your profitability. Asaclean® Purging Compounds are the best choice for faster changeovers.

47%

Asaclean® customers save an average of 47% on color changeovers

Our changeovers took four hours. Now most color changes are 15 minutes or less. We don't have any time wasted.”

Ray D., Plant Manager, Custom Molder, Southeast

Product benefits aren't limited to your team on the floor. Using Asaclean® Purging Compounds for color changes will make a major impact regardless of your role at your plant.

Process Engineers will improve their scrap rates and improve the number of good parts.

Purchasing will be able to cut back on raw goods because there will be far fewer bad parts.

Plant Managers will also see lower machine and manpower costs because their operation runs much more effectively.

Maintenance teams that use Asaclean® Purging Compounds may see the biggest benefits because:

Asaclean® Purging Compounds Solve Color Contamination & Layering

While color changeovers are a necessary part of the job, color contamination is not.

Color contamination is often a self-inflicted wound that occurs when a team runs from color to color without Asaclean® Purging Compounds.

color-changeover-1

We’ve all been there.

You’re on a tight deadline to get an overwhelming number of parts out the door.

You’re trying to save money and time.

You think you’re doing the right thing.

You switch to the next production resin and figure that it costs less per lb than your purge, and will get you to good parts eventually, so what’s the harm?

There are a few problems here:

1. Virgin or scrap resin (regrind) are not designed to clean out your machine.

Resin cannot effectively remove previous resins or color deposits from the previous run. Or worse, scrap resin can potentially re-introduce contaminants (color/carbon) into the machine. Purging compounds are formulated with detergency and cleaning power to both displace the previous resin/colors and clean the machine itself.

Although you will eventually see good parts using regrind or virgin, the previous resin is layering on your screw and barrel setting you up for serious contamination issues.

Before Asaclean®, we’d use around $10,000 worth of ABS to purge each month. With Asaclean®, we saved that resin and our purge cost per month is now to $4,000. The savings are clear and we all see how the usage of Asaclean® is justified!”

Francisco M. , Buyer, Custom Molder, Mexico

2. Eventually, those old colors will start showing up in your future parts — destroying your efficiency and any savings you might have achieved with your shortcut

Layering is a ticking timebomb. Those layers will break off and end up contaminating other parts. Many customers are baffled by where their color streaks or specks are coming from. Most of the time, layering is the cause. Layers are most common on the flights, on the barrel wall, and in the nozzle area. Once layers form, contamination becomes more difficult to clean.

Many maintenance teams rely on screw pulls and complete teardowns to solve the issue.

You cannot afford extended downtime. Fortunately, there is good news. Screw pulls can usually be avoided entirely by purging with Asaclean®.

Bottle cap color contamination over time

3. Price-per-pound is not as important as price-per-purge

Production resins/regrind are not a cheaper option than a quality purging compound, and they do not clean. We often see processors using 4-5x the amount of virgin resin, 5-8x the changeover time, and inevitable teardowns to address contamination issues.

These are all easily avoided with Asaclean®.

We run about twenty different colors and we don't have to pull our screws. We don't have to do anything additional, other than running the Asaclean® between colors. We never have contamination issues or streaking.”

Rodney Davenport , Vice President, CH3 Solutions, Georgia

67%

Asaclean® customers save an average of 67% when dealing with Color Contamination.

If you find yourself dealing with color contamination, we offer Asaclean® Purging Compounds specifically formulated to battle heavy contamination.

Products like EX Grade Purging Compound are incredibly effective at quickly removing contamination and getting you back into good parts in no time.

This is a huge help for your Maintenance team, and it can avoid costly downtime.

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We always recommend working with an Asaclean® Purging Expert to develop your own, customized Purge Program that will help you avoid all contamination in the first place. An effective purge and preventive maintenance program will help extend the integrity and life cycle of your equipment and improve the quality of the parts you produce.

A small amount of Asaclean® between colors can save you a world of headaches over time.