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On many extrusion shop floors, there’s likely a more experienced staffer who can tell something’s amiss with a line using only the instrumentation God gave him or her.

 

Hearing a strange sound from a motor, seeing a sag in a line, feeling a bubble in a film or even smelling an off odor in the plant, a savvy technician can know something’s up and might even be able to diagnose the problem.

 

That institutional knowledge is invaluable, and its intuitive grasp of extrusion has long been the primary means of keeping operations running. Increasingly, however, extruders are adding instrumentation beyond the process tech’s senses, tracking the temperatures, pressures and speeds that ultimately separate good production from bad.

 

At the Extrusion 2016 conference last December in Charlotte, many presenters from the supplier and processor ranks nudged the attendees toward taking a scientific approach to extrusion, and getting a digital second opinion on the analog senses of their most-experienced shop hands.

 

In this video, we discuss the art and the science of extrusion in 2016 with:

• Joe Dziedzic, application engineering manager for ACS Group
• Allan Griff, Griff Extrusion Seminars/Edison Technical Services
• Bob Bessemer, sales manager, medical downstream equipment, Conair Group
• Jim Zinski, VP product technology, Novatec