Will a simple lamp swap actually speed up your blow molding?
If you’re running an older SIG Blomax 10, you’ve probably noticed the cycle speed starting to slip. It’s easy to just shrug and say, “Well, the machine is old.” But usually, it’s not the machine. It’s the lamps. Over time, those infrared tubes get cloudy and the filaments wear thin. You lose that punchy heat density. To make up for it, you end up slowing down the conveyor just to make sure the preform actually gets hot enough. It’s a frustrating bottleneck. The trick to the heat Here’s the thing: you need that shortwave infrared to soak into the PET wall without torching the surface. Some people try to “fix” this by throwing in higher wattage tubes to force more heat. Don’t do that. You’ll just end up scorching your plastic. We make our replacement lamps to match the original Blomax 10 footprint exactly. It’s all about keeping that wattage-per-centimeter steady. That way, the whole preform hits the right temperature evenly, instead of having a few random hot spots. Getting them in We use high-purity quartz glass so they don’t burn out on you prematurely. Plus, they use standard R7s or SK15 connectors. It’s a simple drop-in. No rewiring the control cabinet, no headache. Just swap the tubes, check your voltage, and you’re back in business. But a quick reality check: if you put high-output lamps into an old oven, your cooling blowers have to pull more weight. If your fans are clogged with dust or starting to fail, all that extra heat will just bake your reflectors and kill the new lamps faster. Clean your fans first. What this means for your floor When you replace those tired lamps, your heating windows tighten up. Because the preforms hit the target temperature faster, you can usually bump your machine speed up by 5-10%. It’s honestly the cheapest way to get your capacity back without having to sign a check for a brand-new machine.