What are Plastics Industry Feed Screws and How Are They Made?

Feed screw maintenance.

Plastics industry feed screws, or feed screw augers, are mechanisms that use rotating helical screw blades to move plastics pellets through the barrel of molding and extrusion equipment. The feed screw transports the plastic as it changes phase from solid to viscous liquid through friction, shear, and conductive heat transfer. 

A typical feed screw has three zones. Plastic pellets enters the screw feed section where the pellets are compacted and conveyed. Next is the transition (or compression) section, where the plastic is compressed, conveyed, and melted.  Finally, the liquid plastic moves to the metering section where it is precisely controlled at optimum temperature and viscosity.

For more information about feed screws, or any part of the injection molding process, contact:

AP Corp.

https://a-pcorp.com

508-351-6200

Diagram of injection molding process.

An Introduction to Sentek Dynamics Vibration Testing Systems

Download the full paper here.

Whether you are shopping for your first shaker system, or just educating yourself on vibration and shaker technology in general, you'll find this white paper on Sentek Dynamics shakers helpful. Sentek Dynamics supplies vibration test equipment to reproduce real-world environmental conditions for global manufacturers and offers technology capable of reproducing a wide-variety of test requirements - vibration (sine, random, shock, SoR, RoR, RSTD and others), data recording and dynamic signal analysis.

Although this paper focusses on Sentek Dynamics products, it provides excellent details about shaker technology in general.

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Get the full Sentek Dynamics Vibration Testing Systems Introduction paper at this AP Corp. web page.

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Three Types of Common Industrial Sensors: Inductive, Capacitive, and Photoelectric

Three common industrial sensors are inductive proximity sensors, capacitive proximity sensors, and photoelectric sensors.

Inductive sensors can detect a target from 0.5 millimeters to 40 millimeters. They only detect metallic targets and therefore use a magnetic field to detect presence when a ferrous metal enters the magnetic field.

Capacitive proximity sensors on the other hand can detect dielectric materials such as liquids plastic glass, wood and granulated substances as long as it has a dielectric constant of 1.2 or more. Their range is from three millimeters to 15 millimeters depending on the dielectric material to be detected.

Photoelectric sensors have the greatest detection range from one millimeter to 25 meters or more. They operate by the use of an emitter which transmits a beam of light to the receiver. They operate by detecting the presence, or absence, of a light beam sent from transmitter to receiver.

These are three very basic sensor technologies used in many common applications. The video above provides an elementary understanding of the operational differences.

For more information on any industrial or OEM sensor, contact AP Corporation by visiting https://a-pcorp.com or by calling 508-351-6200

The SVAN 971 Class 1 Sound Level Meter

The SVAN 971 is a Class 1 sound level meter and real-time analyzer. It is an ideal choice for industrial hygiene noise measurements, short period environmental noise measurements, acoustics consultancy surveys, technical engineers dealing with noise issues, and general acoustics noise measurements.

The SVAN 971 is an extremely small instrument with options for 1/1 & 1/3 octave analysis. The instrument brings unprecedented state of the art technology to a SLM of this size.The user interface makes both configuration and measurement easier than ever before. For those who don't have time to work with measurement settings, SVAN 971 offers extremely simple operational mode with Start/Stop. Another exceptional feature is built-in self-vibration monitoring providing information about level of vibration that influences the measurement results.

For more information, contact:
Andruss-Peskin Corporation
https://www.a-pcorp.com
(508) 351-6200