Granulator Types

Beside-the-Press

Beside-the-press granulators can integrate into any molding or extrusion operation for resin reclaim directly at the side of the press. They lend themselves particularly well to shorter production runs where the material regrind must be separated for each subsequent setup. Service accessibility is important to make cleaning and knife changes quick and easy. Granulator options such as viewing windows on the hopper offer the opportunity to watch material being processed. This gives you the ability to gauge how full the cutting chamber is and verify consistent material flow without having to shut the machine down.

Central Granulators

Central granulators offer the flexibility to process large volume parts, with the capability to configure the cutting chamber to granulate higher density parts. They are effective for applications ranging from large injection or blow-molded scrap to furniture components to appliance parts. Tangential or offset geometries are available, allowing you to create a machine specially configured to your process needs. The tangential design offers the capacity to process many types of scrap with improved ingestion at a lower power requirement, while the offset design allows for higher throughput of lower density parts. High-quality output makes it easier to utilize the maximum amount of recycled material in your process.

Combination

Combination machines combine a shredder and a granulator in one space-saving unit. It allows much larger, heavier, and denser materials to be processed first in the shredder, which then provides a very consistent material size and feed volume to the granulator. This “preprocessing” of materials enables a high level of throughput yet still has the result of very high quality granulate. Though more mechanically complicated than single-purpose unit, newer control systems provide sensor-based machine monitoring functions to enable safe and reliable operation. Combination shredder-granulators are able to process plastic-metal scrap and, when equipped with magnetic bar tray, can assist in separating ferrous metals from plastic.

Thermoforming & Under-the-Press

Thermoforming granulators are designed for inline and offline processing of flat materials, like thermoformed scrap, as well as non-conforming parts. In a typical inline application for packaging or cups, thermoformed sheet material moves thorough the trim die operation and edge trimming machine. Then the skeletal web is roll-fed directly into the granulator. Start-up scrap and defective parts can be input through the primary hopper (or an optional a secondary hopper) after going through crush rollers. The flattened material is then metered by the feed rollers, before going into the granulator. The granulator is sometimes positioned directly inline on the same level as the thermoforming line and trim station. In “under-the-press” applications the granulator is positioned in a pit below the trim station.