Getting Your Response Times Right on SACMI and Sidel Blow Molding
If you’re running high-speed rotary machines like the SACMI or Sidel SBO 20 Series 2, you know the pace is brutal. Everything happens in a blink. When you’re pushing through thousands of PET preforms every hour, even a tiny lag in heat-up time is a disaster. It means more scrap, more waste, and a lot of frustration. That’s exactly why we built our replacement lamps the way we did. We wanted to kill that latency.
The Nitty-Gritty on Heat and Power
Getting a preform to the right temperature—fast—comes down to the filament and how it handles voltage. For the SBO 20 Series 2, the lamp has to survive constant, rapid power cycling without frying the electrodes. We went with a high-density tungsten filament. It hits operating temperature in milliseconds. But here’s the thing: you have to get your wattage and voltage exactly right for your oven’s power supply. If you go too low, the preform won’t hit that glass transition temperature before the stretch blow kicks in. If you go too high? You’re just burning through your lamps way faster than you should.
Why the Materials Matter
We use high-purity quartz glass. Why? Because it lets the IR transmission through without the glass itself soaking up the heat. We want that energy hitting the PET, not staying in the lamp. And we didn’t want you spending hours on a rewire. The connectors are a simple drop-in. They just slide right into your existing sockets and you’re back in business. We also added a specific coating to the quartz. It helps focus the infrared heat right on the body of the preform, which stops the machine frame from getting unnecessarily hot.
The Trade-off (The Part Everyone Forgets)
Fast start-ups are great, but they come with a catch. These high-intensity lamps create a massive amount of heat density. If your cooling blowers are clogged or just plain dying, the oven temperature will spike. Once that happens, you’ll start seeing “pearling” or deformed preforms. It’s simple: keep your airflow clear. If you do that, the lamps will do their job perfectly.