Why Recycled Plastic Materials Accelerate Thermocouple Performance Decline

Although using recycled plastic particles for injection molding will lower the cost of raw materials, these materials will undoubtedly hasten hot runner thermocouples' aging damage and performance attenuation, which will significantly shorten their service life.

First of all, complex mixed contaminants are present in recycled materials. Waste plastics are combined with various raw materials, dust, sundries, and leftover incompatible additives during repeated high-temperature processing. After melting, these various contaminants would create additional abrasive hard particles that continuously wear and scour thermocouple probe surfaces during flow inside hot runners, rapidly eroding surface anti-corrosion and wear-resistant coatings and impairing sensing accuracy.

Second, recycled plastics are vulnerable to rapid heat deterioration. Recycled materials have weak thermal stability and a molecular structure that has been repeatedly degraded. Compared to modern materials, they produce significantly more carbon deposits because they are simpler to break down and carbonize at the same molding temperature. Thick heat insulation layers are created when a lot of carbon soil sticks to thermocouple probes, increasing the long-term operating load of thermocouples and producing persistent temperature measurement lag and deviation.

Additionally, recycled materials include higher levels of volatile hazardous components, aging agents, and leftover chemical additions. In a high-temperature molten condition, they will generate more complicated corrosive mixed gasses that continuously erode internal wire cores and thermocouple probes, speeding internal oxidation aging and raising the likelihood of signal drift and intermittent failure.

Furthermore, recycled materials' fluidity is unstable, necessitating regular adjustments to hot runner temperature parameters during real production. Thermocouples experience additional thermal fatigue cycles as a result of frequent temperature changes, which exacerbates the reduction in performance. Businesses must choose improved wear-resistant and anti-corrosion customized models, appropriately shorten cleaning and replacement cycles, and optimize processing temperature parameters to reduce thermal decomposition in order to slow down the aging speed of temperature sensing components when matching thermocouples for long-term recycled material production.