Dry Ice Blasting for the Rubber Industry

General Overview

Throughout our business activity we have encountered several businesses involved in the production of rubber parts, mostly O-Ring production. Components manufactured from a wide range of compounds: EPDM, FKM, NBR, HNBR, ACM, AEM, FFKM, Butyl, Silicone, Fluorosilicones, etc. Each compound exhibits different properties and different challenges depending on the forming process (injection versus compression moulding) the profile of the product to be shaped and the mould design itself. Traditionally, businesses involved in this market, monitor constantly production runs to ensure a reliable product integrity and quality, whilst applying product releasing agents and cyclically cleaning the mould cavities using solvents, ensuring products are released with no blemish.

So, where does Dry Ice Blasting come into the picture ?

We started proposing dry ice blasting specifically to those clients who were looking to solve a problem or those looking for an alternative for the sake of continuous improvement. The typical problem reported is that mould cavities are not sufficiently clean resulting in tarnished or damaged products. This problem may also be heightened with certain compound mixes that may include a certain quantity of recycled feedstock. The root cause is a combination of burnt releasing agent, burnt injection material, improper mould cleaning and other elements that may be directly attributable to the feedstock product mixture or quality.

Results

Results showed that by regularly using dry ice blasting the mould cavities resulted in a lesser likelihood of generating tarnished products over a standard production run. By fine tuning the use of dry ice blasting over the production run, one can expect longer production runs with a reduced likelihood of ending with tarnished or defective end products.  The cool thing is that the cleaning process can be done online, WITHOUT THE NEED to remove the mould from its place. Furthermore, applying dry ice blasting, also implies the elimination of solvents from the whole process.

The effectiveness of dry ice blasting is a combination of the physical properties and action of dry ice upon impacting a surface and the action of compressed air. For further information about the way dry ice works, please click on this link.

Our fleet

Speak to us

If you are interested exploring dry ice blasting technology and if you are looking at trying it out speak to us on marketing@miserv.org.