COVID-19 has caused a great deal of disruption to everyday life. Many businesses have been forced to close or enact extreme limitations of their operating hours in order to protect public safety.
Only essential businesses have been allowed to stay open, and this has caused many people to ask, “What makes a business ‘essential’?”
Bunting magnetic separation, metal detection, and conveying products are essential because they support the plastics processing industry and protect plastic from metal contamination.
Many of the most sought-after products on the market today use plastic. The simplest place we see plastics every day are in products, such as hand soap and sanitizer bottles. On a larger, highly critical scale, plastics are used in countless products that are absolutely essential during the current healthcare crisis caused by COVID-19.
While a variety of standard plastics are necessary during this time, such as plastic packaging for single-use items, medical grade plastic is also highly in demand. Medical grade plastic is versatile, easy to sterilize, shatter-proof, non-permeable, and cost-effective.
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, many plastics manufacturers are switching from their regular production schedules to focus on producing critical goods, such as personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators.
With any plastics production line, metal contamination poses a great risk, as it compromises the integrity of the product, can cause damage to other equipment in the facility, and potentially cause harm to consumers. Bunting’s magnetic separation and metal detection equipment protects plastics from metal contamination and provides a complete solution.
No matter what kind of plastics are being processed, Bunting has a solution for comprehensive removal of metal contaminants. Bunting’s magnetic separation equipment uses powerful rare-earth magnets to pull ferrous metal contamination from the product stream, trapping them against the magnet’s surface so as to prevent any wipe-off.
Many plastics applications, such as injection molding, require that plastic resin be dried at a very high temperature, just before it enters an injection molding machine. Since standard rare earth magnets can temporarily or permanently lose their magnetism when exposed to high temperatures, Bunting offers specialty products, namely our FF350 High Temp Drawer Magnet, to deliver high performance even at high temperatures.
For the detection, capture, and removal of non-ferrous metal contamination, Bunting offers a broad range of metal detection products for the plastics industry. Our metal detectors are able to detect non-ferrous metals such as stainless steel, copper, and aluminum. They are designed so that only contaminated product is removed, and work to preserve as much good product as possible.
When facilities combine magnetic separation equipment with metal detectors into a complete cleaning system, manufacturers can be confident their product will be protected from metal contamination.
Bunting equipment protects a plastic processor’s equipment from the damage that metal contaminants can cause, and as a result reduces downtime caused by repairs. This allows plastics companies to stay on schedule producing critical plastics products required to fight COVID-19, and ensures that the products they manufacture will be of the highest quality.
There are many sacrifices being made as a result of COVID-19, but with magnetic separation and metal detection equipment from Bunting, the quality of plastics products will never have to be sacrificed.
