When it comes to running a successful business, it is all about working smarter, not harder, and there are things that you can do to help increase the efficiency of your injection molding machines. You can help reduce the time when swapping over the tools and creating different parts, which means less downtime and your molding machines can get back to making money sooner. Below are some of the ways you can do this to make your operation more profitable without working much harder.
Inspect Your Resin Shipments
You can sometimes have your resin contaminated when delivered to you, so before you accept delivery, you will first want to check its quality and have it tested. Once the tests have been done, and everything is okay, you can then accept the shipment and take it to your storage facility. By doing this little step it can save you many headaches in the future, and it is worth taking the time to do to ensure the quality of the products you produce and reduce downtime.
Keep Your Storage Facilities Clean
Once you have accepted your delivery and everything is okay with it, you will then need to transport it to your storage facility and ensure that it is clean before storing your resin. Ensure there is no rust or other contaminants in your storage facility, which could cause defects in production, causing you to have to purge material. When you are purging material, injection molding machines cannot operate which increases your downtime and will affect your production levels.
Transporting To Your Machines
When the resin in your storage facility is ready to be used, you will want to try and make sure the distance between storage and where it is needed is not too great. When you do this, it will help to reduce the risk of the resin getting contaminated while transporting it, so it is something you will need to consider.
Keep The Machine Clean
You will also want to ensure that your machine is kept clean, and you check things like the hopper feeder before starting a new run or adding new resin to it. You will also want to check the feed throat, which is often an area that gets overlooked, and it is vital when you are changing tooling and the products you are making, so it is vital to purge it correctly. The final step is to check the screw and barrel, and if everything is clear, you should be ready to start production again.