Extrusion Tooling Maintenance Yields Financial Benefits
Extrusion can be an inherently expensive activity, and it is important to perform tool maintenance to minimize costs as much as possible. Extrusion processors need to be aware of the following factors in their attempts to be profitable:
- Materials often cost more than labor. Running a product oversize to hold the minimum tolerance can waste valuable material.
- Downtime due to poor or damaged tooling is costly.
- It is expensive to keep an extruder running if it produces scrap.
Appropriate tool maintenance addresses all the above issues. New tips and dies are machined to a determined specification, ensuring concentricity and alignment. It is important to remember that minor misalignment of the tools may result in major problems in the final product.