Getting Your KHS Preform Heaters Actually Consistent
If you’re running a KHS blow molding line and you keep seeing those annoying thin walls or that cloudy “pearlescence” in your bottles, you already know the drill. It’s almost always a heat problem. Standard lamps are notorious for this—they either leave cold spots or bake the neck of the preform until it’s ruined. That’s why we built our PETC heater modules. We wanted to stop the guesswork and just fix the gaps in thermal consistency. The science bit (kept simple) Here’s the thing: it all comes down to how the quartz tube handles light. We messed around with the halogen gas pressure and how the filament is wound so the infrared energy actually hits the PET resin at the right frequency. No more “hot center, cold edge” nonsense. And the best part? These are drop-in replacements. You don’t have to spend your weekend rewiring control cabinets or hacking away at your lamp frames. They just fit. What’s under the hood We use high-purity synthetic quartz because it can take a beating. Rapid cycling creates a lot of thermal shock, and these tubes don’t crack under pressure. Depending on what your machine needs, we’ve got different wattages and voltages. Maybe you need short-wave intensity to keep your cycles fast, or maybe a coated tube to spread the heat out more evenly. Whatever the case, the specs are tight. We also use standard connectors, so you get a solid electrical connection that won’t arc or burn out when the current gets heavy. Real talk from the shop floor Now, a word of caution. High-wattage lamps are great for heavy-wall preforms, but they bring a lot of heat into the oven. If your cooling blowers are clogged with dust or just aren’t up to the task, you’re asking for trouble. You could end up overheating your internal wiring. Keep those blowers clean. Once you’ve got everything dialed in, you can finally stop babysitting the machine. No more constant manual temperature tweaks every time you start a production run. You just set it, and it works.