Troubleshooting the Extrusion Process

Troubleshooting extrusion problems is one of the most challenging tasks in extrusion operations, requiring a good understanding of the extrusion process and the material properties, good instrumentation, good analysis tools, and a systematic and logical approach. This book addresses all issues crucial in extrusion troubleshooting. Additionally, it includes industrial case studies, richly illustrated with photographs and photomicrographs, used to provide exemplary approaches to efficient problem analysis and problem solving. The interconnectivity between the different relevant knowledge areas such as materials engineering, processing technology, and product development is emphasized. This revised third edition comprises a very significant update, with a great deal of new content, especially focusing on additional case studies as well as new sections on collection and interpretation of extrusion process data, rotational rheometry, the smartphone, how screw design can affect extruder performance, melt temperature variation, recent research on automatic optimization of extruder barrel temperatures, process signal analysis using Fast Fourier Transform, among other topics.