Parkinson Technologies announced KCH Continuous Belt Screen Changer enhancements

Parkinson Technologies' Key Filters brand is pleased to announce the latest refinements to the popular KCH continuous belt screen changer. New mechanical upgrades to the KCH lineup include more robust construction, cooling enhancements and maintenance features.

"From the start, the KCH has been a well-received, high-performance machine in the continuous melt filtration market and our team of engineers, assembly personnel and field service technicians worked closely with our customers to make a great machine even better," says Justin Marriott, Product Manager of Key Filters. "In fact, this recent iteration saw the most advancements since the KCH's inception."

Introduced in 2012, the KCH has provided unparalleled performance with hundreds sold to companies seeking a solution to their melt filtration needs. Continuing that performance trend, the Key Filters team looked at ways to make the KCH even more robust, faster, and easier to maintain. The result is an extension of the KCH's high-performance capabilities even in the most demanding environments and challenging applications. To increase overall robustness, vital machine sensors were guarded, moved further away from high-heat locations and upgraded to meet extreme production environments. "As an example, the puller sensor was upgraded from a string potentiometer to an extreme-duty, non-contact inductive sensor," says Justin Marriott. "The sensor selected is a proven solution across a broad range of demanding applications, one being heavy-duty sanitation trucks, just to give you an idea of our commitment to robust engineering."

Additional advancements include increased cooling through the inlets and outlets, resulting in three times the flow rate compared to the previous version. This cooling enhancement accelerates the formation of the sealing plug, which allows the KCH to advance the screen at an even quicker rate, thus filtering out higher volumes of contaminants and reducing the risk of downtime due to seal failure.

When working with heated polymer in a real-world scenario, situations arise in an extrusion facility outside of the screen changer's control that may cause significant down-time and damage to the machine. This is often due to accidentally increasing the screw speed on the extruder too quickly at start-up or interruption in the cooling water to the screen changer which results in a loss of the sealing plug in the screen outlet. The Key Filters team looked at ways to reduce potential down-time to these unfortunate situations by separating the puller and outlet assemblies. The heated polymer will bypass the puller assembly, eliminating component damage and providing an easier clean-up if plug loss occurs. An extrusion line can be fully operational in just a fraction of the time.

"The KCH continuous belt screen changer is an increasingly popular and successful product for our organization and the Key Filters team has done an outstanding job of working closely with customers to achieve ongoing continuous improvement," says Peter Termyn, President and CEO of Parkinson Technologies. "We will continue to refine our machinery to increase performance, efficiency, and safety."