Tinius Olsen/Hounsfield    MP600 – Melt Flow Indexer

The new MP600 Melt Flow Indexer from Tinius Olsen/Hounsfield is currently on trial at Rapra Technology. Melt Flow Rate (MFR) and Melt Volume Rate (MVR) are important quality control requirements in the plastics industry.

Rapra Technology, Europe’s leading independent plastics and rubber specialists. Rapra have been involved with plastics since their introduction as commercial materials. During this time it has amassed a wealth of expertise and information on plastic materials and can boast 80 years of independent consultancy.

The new unit offers a digital control panel, which provides step by step programming of the conditions required for the particular test to be carried out, these include selection of temperature, load, orifice diameter / length, cut-off intervals, pre-heat time and many more. An individual customised set of conditions can be entered and saved for future use. This is particularly useful for repeat quality control tests using the same set of conditions.

On starting the test, the unit displays the time taken to load the test material and the pre-heat timer. Once the material has been pre-heated, the cut-off count down timer provides an audible bleep when the cut-off is due, which takes away the need of manually starting and stopping a stop-watch. But if after the first cut-off, you realise that the estimated cut-off time is wrong, the program can be easily entered into and changed with practically no delay. On completion of the procedure A tests, the weight of each cut-off can be manually entered into the control panel for automatic calculation of flow rates.

For procedure B determinations, the control panel again provides easy to use set-up screens and allows up to ten automatic capture points to be entered and comes complete with an automatic motorised weight lowering device. The set-up procedure provides the option of determining the Melt Density using a manual cut-off. This allows the automatic calculation of both Melt Volume Rate and Melt Flow Rate using procedure B.

Rapra Technology feel that the Melt Flow Apparatus is a versatile addition to any company undertaking routine quality control processes. Having run a series of tests in tandem with our North-East Laboratory, the results were found to be reproducible and within accepted experimental limits between laboratories.