Surface finishing experts Guyson International have recently installed a special Kerry Ultrasonic UCR (ultrasonic clean and rinse) machine for cleaning extrusion dies used for PVC extrusion into Eurocell Profiles Ltd, the UK’s market-leading manufacturer and distributor of quality PVC-U profiles used in windows, doors, conservatories and building products.

The company found they regularly needed to clean their dies, of plateout (gas fumes from PVC extrusion process) and other residue build up, to maintain a clean profile for accurate extrusions and prolong their working life. And due to the very precise nature of these dies any prospective cleaning process must be able to clean without any fear of introducing dimensional change or wear to the critical profiles. Also due to the fact that many of these dies are in daily use, time can’t be found to move them off site or have them unproductive for long periods so an in house solution was required. So Guyson proposed a Kerry Ultrasonic UCR system.

Trials were undertaken to determine the most effective transducer frequency and then a special heavy duty 25 kHz ultrasonic twin tank wash and rinse system was designed and manufactured.

Smaller dies are loaded into a stainless steel basket and placed on the heavy duty base support grid on the bottom of the 800mm wide tank. The larger multi-segment dies (up to 190 kg) are lowered by hoist onto the reinforced grid inside stage one’s lidded 144 litre tank where they are cleaned in a hot caustic cleaning solution with the low frequency 25 kHz sonics. The tank is fitted with two submersible transducers, to deliver the sonics, mounted to the front and the rear side walls of the tank and also low level protection, heating complete with temperature indication and a process timer.

The dies are then moved via hoist into stage two’s lidded tank where they are submerged and thoroughly rinsed clean in clean town-water. Stage two also has a flexible spray wand to additionally spray the dies clean of any residuals and the tank is fitted with a weir to drain. Eurocell’s Production Manager Ian Toplis states “that now with the new Kerry Ultrasonic UCR system they can clean six moulds in the time that their old ultrasonic cleaner takes to clean one.”

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