Page 51 - Plastics News September 2026
P. 51
FEATURE NEWS
Exafilt: Putting An End To Gate Blockage In Hot Runner Moulds
Amal Shah Sizing the filter correctly matters just as much
ew problems interrupt a production run as fitting one. A filtration level that's too fine
quite as abruptly as a blocked gate in a adds unnecessary pressure drop and restricts
Fhot runner mould. Short shots, a sudden flow, while one that's too coarse lets the debris
loss of cavity balance, or a full stoppage while that actually causes blockages straight through.
the tool is opened and the gate cleared out by EXAFILT is offered in mainly four filtration levels,
hand, all of it eating into uptime on a system that 0.25mm, 0.40mm, 0.60mm and 1.00 mm, each
was supposed to be running unattended. matched to a specific gate diameter range and
injected weight. EXAFILT works on the unique
The usual culprits are well known to anyone who ‘flight filtration’ principle, reducing pressure drop
has had to troubleshoot one. Small amounts of across the unit while enabling ease of cleaning.
degraded or carbonised resin can build up in
dead spots within the hot runner or at the gate It also arrives as a complete, ready-to-fit unit
itself over time, eventually breaking loose and rather than a component that needs engineer-
lodging in the opening. Contamination in the raw ing around. The filter comes with a machine noz-
material, whether it's dust, unmelted particles, or zle adaptor customized to the processor's own
the occasional stray fleck of metal, can do the machine, so installation is a straightforward ret-
same. The risk only grows as gates get small- rofit rather than a mould redesign or downtime-
er: many hot runner gates run well under a mil- heavy changeover. The filter nozzle itself, is sup-
limetre in diameter, which means it doesn't take plied with an aluminium rod which allows fast
much debris to choke one off. and effective cleaning of the filter element with
just a push of the rod inside the housing.
EXAFILT addresses this at the source, before the
melt ever reaches the gate. Built around a Ger- EXAFILT is TUV India ISO 9001:2015 certified and
man-made filter element, the EXAFILT filter noz- CE marked, and has now been fitted on more
zle catches contamination and degraded mate- than 500 machines across the country, a strong
rial in the melt stream and stops it from travelling indicator that a filter placed in the right spot can
any further downstream. Because it sits ahead save far more production time than it costs to
of the hot runner and the gate, the parts of the install.
mould that are hardest to access and most dis-
ruptive to clean are the ones it protects.
September 2026 PLASTICS NEWS 55
