Sprayed lubricant increases PET bottle output

Applying a spray to the stretch rods to lubricate the friction surface between the rod and the pre-form holder seal increased production of PET bottles on a bottle blowing machine.

Kluber food grade lubricants and support services benefit the foremost manufacturers in food, beverage and pharmaceutical production to help maximise overall equipment effectiveness.

Major UK soft drinks manufacturers are amongst them and utilise Kluber services in bottle blowing, filling, capping and labelling.

As an example, the production of PET bottles on a Sidel bottle blowing machine came under scrutiny as part of the Engineering Continuous Improvement programme of one such manufacturer.

The desire was to increase output of PET bottles in order to increase finished product production performance by increased utilisation and so increased profitability.

Kluber Paraliq lubricant is now applied via a spray to the stretch rods to lubricate the friction surface between the rod and the pre-form holder seal.

Downstream machines, each with multiple lubrication points, also required a lubrication enhancement with food grade lubricants to assure bottle blowing didn't outstrip capacity.

Many of the lubrication points are located directly above the food line from which possible lubricant contact could inevitably occur! a) Empty plastic bottles enter the Filler via an overhead transport conveyor directly from the Bottle Blowing machine.

b) Travelling through the machine the bottles are filled, capped and labelled.

c) Each filling slide operates numerous times per hour under 24 hour x 7 day production conditions.

d) Each friction point is lubricated every second day during "flavour changes" to maintain optimum performance running.

The food grade regime is maintained with Kluber special lubricants and the bottle blower can now produce an additional 260,000 PET bottles per annum.

The PET material deformation characteristics continue to produce a high quality PET bottle and the filler/capper machines now have the added benefit of a high quality food grade lubricant regime to meet the higher output.

This whole process benefits from a higher quality lubrication management solution where production is higher, profit is up, lubricant consumption is less and overall lubrication maintenance spend is down.

The engineering manager stated: "We feel more confident using high performance food grade products in our system and are happy to be working in partnership with Kluber".

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