New blender puts more efficient spin on mixing processes

Problem: Custom molder Key Manufacturing LLC needed to free up technicians to do other tasks.  

Solution: Adding a blender from Wittmann eliminated the need for the company, which previously had only one blender, to pre-stage mixing tasks; it also saved floorspace.  

By Karen Hanna 

Each week, custom molder Key Manufacturing mixes about 20,000 pounds of resins, in 70 different colors. 

Until recently, the company’s approach has been mostly manual. Relying on just one blender, the company has scheduled and staged jobs, with a technician overseeing mixing and moving materials from the blender to the appropriate injection molding machine (IMM) where they are processed.  

“He would look at his workload as far as jobs coming up; we pre-stage our jobs. And he would be responsible for cleaning that blender out, running through and mixing several different batches and everything that’s involved with that,” said GM Anthony Neeley, who has worked at the Madison, Ind., plant — a facility of MANAR Inc., Edinburgh, Ind. — for about four years. 

Neeley said while the blender handling the materials is high-quality, the process was time-consuming and inefficient. However, the one it replaced also fell below Neeley’s standards.  

“Back way before, we would use augers at the feed throat, which is not a choice that I recommend. I’ve never had luck with those in the past. I’ve been in the industry for a long time and seen a lot of different techniques of how to blend material. Augers are not a good way; there’s too many variables that can cause you to use too much color, and color’s expensive,” he said.   

At a time when Key, like most manufacturers, is struggling to find workers, Neeley sought to make better use of his technician’s time. The labor situation, he said, has never been worse, with a “bidding war for [people] … and everyone around raising their starting wages.”  

“We started looking at our labor and saying, ‘OK, where’s it better spent? Where’s our time better spent?’ ” Neeley said. 

To improve its process, Key turned to Wittmann for a new blender. 

With a throughput of 170 pounds per hour and the ability to mix eight components, Key’s new Gravimax G14 can handle blending duties with minimal operator interaction. To simplify its processes, Key has put the blender on a 550-ton press.  

In addition to freeing up a technician’s time, the new feed-throat-mounted blender has saved the plant space because all the material it handles is processed right at the IMM. 

According to Wittmann, the blender has a pneumatic slide gate, which ensures that the batch is well-mixed before entering the throat of the machine. It has an LED status bar, a viewing window on the door and a 7-inch touch-screen controller. It is accurate to within 0.1 percent of set point for every material and every batch.  

In just a few weeks of using the blender, Neeley declared the equipment acquisition a success.