How to Troubleshoot Your Granulator Blades
To increase the efficiency of your production and plan for your downtime, you need to know when your blades are performing at their best. You also need to be able to tell if your granulator needs maintenance even before it breaks down.
When it comes to operating a granulator, carrying out maintenance and other preventative measures can help prevent unwanted downtime while increasing the safety of your working environment. However, many granulator operators carry out maintenance JIT (just in time). This means they have to often pay attention to early warning signs that signal the need for maintenance.
To conveniently understand these early signs, there are certain questions and factors you have to consider. Below are the factors and also the right questions that will help you notice the early signs of maintenance.
Know If Your Granulator is Working Too Hard
When granulator blades become dull, they tend to require more electricity to keep performing. The dull blades and the high requirement for electricity show that the machine is working too hard to process materials.
For this reason, you need to pay attention to the amp readings of your granulator once maintenance has been carried out. Remember to take note of the values from the reading. This will serve as a reference to determine if there is a change in the amount of electricity consumption. With this information, you can tell if your granulator is working harder than usual.
Is Your Granulator Overheating?
Just like in the case of a granulator that is working too hard, dull blades can cause the granulator to overheat. The dull blades cause the granulators to use up more electricity, causing the temperature of the machine to increase drastically. This temperature rise is dangerous and can lead to fire conditions.
The dull blades cause high vibrations, increasing the temperature of the granulator. This in turn leads to a decrease in the overall life of the machine.
Do Your Granulated Particles Have A Uniform Size?
When the knives of a granulator do not have equal and proper spacing between them, the machine tends to tear the material instead of cutting. This causes the granulated particles to have uneven shapes and sizes. Some particles may be cut to the wrong dia making it difficult for the particle to pass through the particle screen.
The gap or spacing between your granulator blades should be even to produce consistent shape and size of particles. The best spacing for your granulator knives depends mainly on the specification of your machine as well as the material you want to cut.
When setting up the spacing for your granulator knives, ensure that each knife has the same width. This will help to serve as a uniform pinch point across the entire length of your granulator.
Are Your Knives Wearing Out Too Quickly?
Several factors can cause the knives of your granulator to wear out quickly. Some of these factors include:
1. Improper feed rate.
When you put large amounts of material into your granulator, the material first floats on the rotor. This causes the blades to scrape against the material before cutting it and leading to the knives wearing out.
Setting up conveyor feeding allows for a more consistent rate of feeding materials into the machine. This prevents you from overloading the granulator with large amounts of materials. If you’re able to set up conveyor feeding, you will need to educate your operators on the feed rate that will help to prevent the granulator knives from wearing out.
2. Poor blade material selection.
Selecting proper steel blades helps to ensure maximum wear resistance reaching up to certain levels of toughness. You can increase the overall life of your granulator steel blades by applying coatings like tungsten carbide. Many recycling industries that use granulators have at one point experienced the benefit of coating their granulator blades. To an extent, applying coatings on your granulator blades can increase the overall life by about 25 to 100%
3. Dirt and Mixing of different materials.
Exposing your granulator blades to dirty materials as well as a mixture of different materials has a serious impact on the life of the blades. Dirt and a mixture of different materials make it difficult to optimize the efficiency of your blades. To prevent the effects on your blades, you need to properly clean all materials before they enter the granulator. Adding a shaker table is an effective way to help shake off excess dirt, increasing the life of your granulator blades. For high volume recyclers, utilizing wash lines appears to be a very effective way to remove dirt or labels from materials especially plastics. It also helps to separate and pick out bottle caps.
Although there are numerous materials used for granulator blades, there are however some blade materials that are above the others. These materials deliver a unique blend of quality performance and affordability. Choose from our list of high-quality granulator blades for a soothing recycling experience.