Blow moulding machine with arrangement for cleaning the blow mould

Abstract

An apparatus for transforming plastic preforms into containers, includes at least one blow mould which forms a cavity, inside which the plastic preforms can be transformed into containers. The apparatus includes an opening and closing mechanism for opening and closing the blow mould, and a cleaning device for cleaning regions of the blow mould. The cleaning device includes at least a first cleaning element for cleaning an inner wall of the blow mould, which cleaning element is arranged at least at times outside the blow mould.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application is a divisional of U.S. application Ser. No. 12 / 853,162, filed Aug. 9, 2010, which is entirely incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates to apparatuses for transforming plastic preforms into plastic containers, and in particular to blow moulding machines. Such blow moulding machines have long been known from the prior art. They usually comprise a blow mould, inside which the plastic preforms are expanded through the application of pressure to form plastic containers. During this stretch-blow moulding of plastic containers, so-called oligomers, i.e. short-chain molecules or foreign substances, are excreted onto the blow mould from the plastic of the plastic preforms. The surface of these blow moulds therefore becomes dull and in the extreme case rough as it becomes increasingly soiled. However, this has negative effects on the bottle quality, since this may lead to the s...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The automated cleaning system simplifies and safely cleans blow moulds, reducing the risk of user injury, maintaining high mould temperatures for efficient cleaning, and enabling quicker restarts, while eliminating the need for manual handling and reducing bottle quality issues from surface roughness.

Problems solved by technology

The surface of these blow moulds therefore becomes dull and in the extreme case rough as it becomes increasingly soiled.

However, this has negative effects on the bottle quality, since this may lead to the situation whereby the bottle appearance may become cloudy on account of the dull blow moulds or else the cooling on the mould surface is reduced as a result of the roughness.

Since both of these problems are unacceptable, the blow moulds must be cleaned and usually polished at regular intervals.

Particularly high degrees of soiling by oligomers occur when working with high mould temperatures for process reasons (e.g. in the case of hot fill processes), since soiling is much faster with hot moulds and the cleaning of the moulds in the hot state can be carried out only with a safety risk due to the risk of burning.

Particularly in the case of a so-called hot filling installation with a blow moulding machine and a filler block, this cleaning of the moulds is often a very negative aspect.

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