Schmalbach-Lubeca: No Friction, No Heat, No Problem

December 28, 2012 by Miaja Cornelius

One of the benefits of HammerTek’s patented Smart Elbow deflection elbow design is the reduction in friction and heat that results from keeping material from contacting the walls of its pipe elbows.

Getting rid of that friction has done nothing but good for Schmalbach-Lubeca’sBlythewood,South Carolinalocation. One of the company’s 63 plants worldwide producing millions of plastic beverage bottles daily, the Blythewood plant was using long-radius elbows to convey PET Poly Pellets from rail car to silo, and from silo to molding.

Traditional elbows change a material’s direction by causing the material to deflect off the inside of the pipe walls. With materials like the pellets used at the beverage plant, this contact is the source of friction, heat, and the unwanted side effects of both.

“When feeling the exterior of the long-radius elbow, the elbow felt hot at the point of impact,” said Thom Iwancio, plant system engineer. After changing over to HammerTek’s product in the same system, “when feeling the Smart Elbow unit it was cool to the touch.”

Impact-generated heat was causing the product to produce “streamers” inside the pipe that collected on the magnet protection before the molding operation, effectively “choking” off the material flow to the injection molding machines. Once this happened, the system would have to be shut down to clean out the magnet chute, causing loss of production, time and money.

Since changing to Smart Elbow deflection elbows in 1999, the streamers have been eliminated. Operational time has improved, the Smart Elbow model changeover has paid for itself, and less material is being found in the system’s dust collection system — a result of the Smart Elbow deflection elbow’s method of deflecting material without impact.

Inside every Smart Elbow deflection elbow is a patented Vortex Chamber, a nearly spherical chamber that allows the formation of a slowly rotating ball of material which, instead of creating eddies or other pockets of turbulence, redirects and smooths the flow of material into its new direction while keeping it from impacting the walls of the chamber. This eliminates elbow wear, helps save energy in pumping costs, and increases product quantity and quality by improving material delivery rate and flow.

To read the complete case study, go to: http://www.hammertek.com/case-study-plastic-schmalbach.asp For more information on the HammerTek Smart Elbow deflection elbow, please visit www.hammertek.com.