Predictive Maintenance of Injection Machines

If you truly want predictive maintenance, I've implemented a few strategies. What specifically are you looking at preventing/replacing before failure? i.e. Screws, barrels, nozzles, tips, autoloaders, contactors, etc...

I'll see if I can help.

I looking for preventing before failure:guides, pneumatic cylinders, screws, barrels, tips, hydraulic pumps; all the components of injection machines who can be detect.

I be glad if you can send me some strategies.

Complete Oil analysis of hydraulic fluids woud be my first choice to detect incipient wear parts. Proper viscosity of the hydaulic fluid, wear and magnetic parts detection is fundamental. These type of analysis inconjunction with vibration analysis of all the rotating equipmet of the system. IR temperature measurements of sliding parts.

Caballoloco is correct for the overall health of the unit. (assuming hydraulic machines) Have you local oil vendor set you up on a 6 mnth or yrly analysis of your hydraulic oil. They'll also give some instruction on what to look for. (If not let me know) The vibration analysis and IR is good but can be somewhat costly for injection molding machines. I've never had a bearing failure in 6 years, but it would be beneficial to get a baseline and then monitor the oil well. If you see signs of increased wear in your oil, get another vibration inspection done. The IR is ok for catching loose connections in control panels and the like, we also used a Fluke IR gun for verification of heater bands and barrel temps.

Screws, barrels, and the like - what type of resin are you running. We ran highly engineered stuff along with 30% glass filled nylon. If it's very abrasive, you might be rebuilding yearly. Another question, who is your vendor for screws, barrels, tips, etc... I used Concor out of Hayward, WI. Very quick, good quality, and free training at their facility. What material are your screws made of. I used 9V tool steel for screws, tips, check rings, and used 10V bimetallic sleeved barrels. This allowed the screw to wear before the barrel.

I would have my maintenance crew measure screws and barrels monthly unless we were changing materials. Then it was whenever a change over happened. I flooded myself with that data, check the delta between screw and barrel. There is a general guideline based on compression ratios as to what that can be. Use that to predict when to have it rebuilt. Concor will stock screws and barrels for you and invoice you at time of use, that really helps with predictive.

There's a lot of information you can use, feel free to contact me directly to get into greater detail. I can send you some spreadsheets that I kept and how I monitored it. Hope this helps or at least gets you started.

If you can send me some examples in detail i will be grateful.