Fixing the Heat Gap in SIG Blomax and KHS Blow Molding
If you’ve run KHS or SIG Blomax 4/6/8 machines, you know the headache of uneven heat. One minute everything is fine, and the next, you’re staring at bottles with wonky wall thickness or weird deformations. It’s frustrating. We decided to tackle those heat-field gaps head-on. Our replacement lamps aren’t some complicated overhaul—they’re a simple drop-in. They do exactly what the OEM lamps do, and in a lot of cases, they actually do it better. The power side of things These lamps are built to pack a lot of punch into a small space. We balanced the voltage and wattage so the filament hits its operating temperature fast. The goal here is to get the preform to that glass transition point quickly without overshooting. Because if you overshoot, you get scorching. Simple as that. Just do yourself a favor and double-check that your power supply can handle the current draw. You don’t want to burn them out prematurely. Why the glass matters We use high-purity quartz because PET blowing is brutal on equipment. The thermal cycling is extreme. Inside, there’s a halogen cycle that stops the tungsten filament from evaporating and clouding up the tube walls. This keeps the light clear and the heat moving. We also have a few versions with special coatings. These shift the infrared spectrum so the heat actually hits the preform, rather than just baking your machine frame. Getting them running Swapping these in is easy. They use standard connectors, so you can just pop them in and go. No rewiring the oven, no drama. One thing we spent a lot of time on is the “end-effect.” You know how the temperature usually dips off at the edges of the lamp? We fixed that by tweaking the filament length. It kills those annoying cold spots. One quick heads-up: more heat density means your oven’s ventilation has to work harder. If you decide to push the wattage higher than the original specs, make sure your cooling fans are actually doing their job. Otherwise, you’re risking warped reflector housings, and nobody wants to deal with that.