Auxiliary Equipment: Advanced Gravimetric Additive Masterbatch Feeder

A gravimetric feeder for color and additive masterbatches is said to be the first to feature an outer protective shell with an inner floating weigh hopper and single-point load cell to ensure accuracy, even in industrial settings affected by vibration and other outside influences,

The Liad Smart ColorSave 1000 was recently launched by global additive masterbatch supplier Ampacet Corp., Tarrytown, N.Y., which acquired Israel’s Liad Weighing and Control Systems earlier this year, and marked its entry into the auxiliary equipment business. 

This new-generation feeder also uses advanced algorithms that reportedly deliver unmatched dosing precision, regardless of material density changes, so expensive color and additive concentrates can be fed at the lowest possible letdown ratio and at the low end of the tolerance specification to save on masterbatch cost. This feeder is designed to receive signals from an injection molding machine both in the recovery (screw retraction) and injection phases, ensuring that masterbatch is added throughout the entire process.

Said to be the have the industry’s highest precision in additive feeding, ColorSave 1000 precision enables savings of up to 35% on masterbatch use when compared to remote batch blending systems, up to 15% compared to a batch blender at machine throat and up to 50% compared to a volumetric feeder. Said commercial director Doug Brownfield, “The unmatched accuracy of ColorSave 1000 enables manufacturers to reap significant savings in masterbatch and production costs. ColorSave pays for itself with potential savings of 0.5% of additive per cycle.”

Other benefits of the feeder include user-friendly design, which allows operators to quickly empty components between jobs through a quick-purge auto system, resulting in significant savings on labor and production time. In addition, the loss-in-weight controlling function allows optimum adjustment of operating points. The ColorSave 1000 features automatic calibration, which enables processors to consistently feed at the desired set point.  This unit can be used with any injection molding, extrusion and blow-molding machine and is capable of integration with the LIAD Smart Spectro real-time inline color management technology.