Advanced Desiccant Bed Dryer Brings Greater Efficiency to Injection Molding Manufacturer
Plastics Northwest benefits from an industrial desiccant dryer with a more flexible, energy-efficient, and smart design
CUSTOMER
Plastics Northwest, Inc. is a custom design and manufacturing company specializing in injection molded plastics, pad printing, and assembly.
CHALLENGE
The company’s drying equipment required three people to move around the manufacturing floor, used a substantial amount of energy, and wasn’t very user-friendly.
SOLUTION
After looking at several desiccant dryer solutions, the company settled on NGX Desiccant Bed Dryer from AEC for its portability, energy efficiency, and state-of-the-art controls.
RESULTS
After installation of a new NGX P-150, the company has a versatile drying solution that’s easy to move around the shop floor, uses less energy, and is user-friendly for operators.
Plastics Northwest prides itself on engineering excellence in plastics and its modern facility. When it came to the resin drying process, the lack of portability of large desiccant units and their energy-sucking design lacked the high standards they set for themselves. It was time for a better solution.
Efficiency is critical in injection molding. Whether it’s energy efficiency, or the ability to move a piece of equipment around the shop floor to drying injection molding plastic materials quickly, your operation and bottom line suffer without efficient equipment. With 18 injection molding machines ranging from 56 to 950 tons, this growing company needed a better desiccant drying solution than their current equipment lineup.
“Although our previous dryer was on wheels, the two-part design of the hopper and the main dryer unit meant that we needed two or three people to move it around the floor,” says Dave Holland, Production Manager. “The other big issue we had consistently is materials sitting in the dryer for way too long when operators forget to monitor and turn the machine off. We’d have dryers going for six, eight, even ten hours, using a lot of energy simply because nobody thinks to turn it off. So, materials would just sit there and cook.”
