I am curious to know how many of you are using dry ice blasting for cleaning moulds and what your experience good/bad are, is it giving you any benefits etc.

Hi Jesper ,

Yes, it's good for the mold , especially for some special raw material . we produced a part which raw material is PA66+40% glass, when use this machine to clean the mold , it can increase 2M shots for the mold.

Best regard
Tony

It works great. We used it on high cavitation preform molds that we used to produce soft drink bottles. Mokd life was extended and vent passages were kept cleaner which allowed less held ware. Check out your closest dry ice supplier because freight can be a cost factor. If you buy enough they will supply the storage bins. It is noisy but effective.

Bill, i believe i just solved your problem with the logistic of dry ice and the hazzle with the storage bins...our technology you just connect to a cylinder of liquid CO2 and during the cleaning process you produce the dry ice particles. let me know if you need further info.

What is meant by Dry ice blasting?

Dry Ice Blasting is a process that takes crushed dry ice ( sometimes referred to as "Cardice" or as "card ice" which is the solid form of carbon dioxide ) and under pressure is forcibly propelled against the cavity or core surface of a mould. The Thermal difference of this blasted propellant freezes the contaminants on the mould surface and these contaminants fall from the surface due to the thermal difference of the contaminant and the mould surface.

This is a very effective process to clean the mould surfaces and is environmentally friendly as there are no VOC's ( due to solvents ) involved in this cleaning process. The crushed dry ices evaporates.

Peter, good and short explanation..the difference between pellet blasting (what you are referring to) and snow blasting is that we connect to liquid Co2 cylinder/tank and create the dry ice pellets during the cleaning. This saves you on the hazzel of having the dry ice delivered in bins and normal lead time is 2 days. You must also consider the fact when dry ice has been produced it starts to evaporate with 8 - 10 % per 24 hours and the older the ice gets you need to increase the consumption up to 20 %..so it is fairly cost heavy...and we have exchanged pellet blasters with our technology for cleaning moulds in the plastic industry.

Great...!!!! I learn something today. I was using dry ice only for molds repairs for the press fit inserts. Warm the cavity and put the insert in the dry ice to make it shrink. Now I know that I also can clean molds with this stuff.
TPB

Thierry, it is fantastic for cleaning molds, clean it while it is still sitting in the machine, it will only take a few minutes..and a lot of other stuff...you can also use it for surface treatment before applying paint etc. we have achieved up to 3 -5 timers better adhesion of paint and at the same time reducing rejects.