Have you ever contemplated how heat is being used in your application? Have you considered alternative materials to manage heat better in your application? Did you ever wonder if the control systems in your application are responsive enough to changes in your processes? Are the raw materials coming into the product making it harder to produce a quality product? Are you looking at improving operational efficiencies or improving costs? Is your current heat solution the optimum solution that actually realizes benefits to your application in an ideal way to cope with changing competition and regulations?
If you are in manufacturing, packaging, or any other industry where heat is a critical part of the process, and have been using heat the same way for a long time, this 5-10 minute is a must-read!
Process heating is a common area amongst the majority of industries that stays at the core of business processes in many industrial plants. Small changes to the way heat is delivered, sensed, and controlled has a strong influence on your system performance. This is where we at Nexthermal create an impact! Nexthermal is an industry leader in industrial heating solutions and develops products for markets like yours where heat is essential to performance. We help our customers develop new products, improve process efficiency, energy savings, and elevate performance and quality. Identifying heater placement, sensor placement, wattage distribution, unique wattage design, minimizing heat sinks, anticipating performance issues, and solving them while also helping you minimize cost with accelerated development is what we do best!
Nexthermal also builds thermal systems with unique wattage designs that help our customers increase manufacturing throughput. Check out our customers’ amazing success stories with Nexthermal. With our dedicated Thermal Solutions team; we can design, simulate, source, build, test, and install the thermal solution you need to accelerate your innovation.
Nextflex
As a part of our continued innovation in heat solutions, we developed Nextflex, a tubular heater with superior heat conductivity and flexible design that can be formed in any 3D shape to enable heat transfer to places in your application that were previously difficult to reach before!
Traditional ways to electrically heat a tool were to either drill a hole for a cartridge heater or machine a groove for a tubular heater to sit in. In cases where the full perimeter was needed to be heated the standard was to attach mica heater plates to the tool. Each of these methods has limitations practically. For example:
- For cartridge heaters the placement is frequently dictated by the last place available rather than what the heat dynamics of the system needed
- For tubular heaters the bending complexity to adjust for the shapes needed to profile the heat needed to be done by a special fixture which added cost and time to the order process. Further the bends would make the heater oval and loose heat transfer at the corners after assembly, causing hot spots
- For the heated mica plates, the heat transfer to the tool was frequently compromised as they would loosen from thermal expansion and contraction, uneven surface to surface contact would create hot spots and surface oxidation would reduce the efficiency over time
There needed to be a better way i.e. a heater that was retrofittable to existing tools, improved the uniformity, and be able to be not only bent easily for installation but also bend in more than one direction to allow for three-dimensional heating. With the Nextflex all this is possible!
The Nextflex uses a unique construction to bring all the points together:
- Standard diameter to fit existing grooves, tolerance for best pressed in retention and heat transfer over the range of temperatures. The action of pressing the malleable heater into the groove improves the heat transfer and operating efficiency over a standard tubular
- Stainless steel outer casing for oxidation resistance allowing for good heat transfer over the life of the product, as well as matching the thermal expansion of the tool.
- Copper infill which allows optimum heat transfer and improved ductility during bending and installation eliminating potential hot spots
- Nickel inner heater for best bending performance and high temperature corrosion resistance
What this means to the tool builder – a heater that allows you a best-in-class versatility, performance, and reliability.
What this means to the end customer that is operating and maintaining the tool – a heater that is simple to install, can be repaired in the field, and no longer needs the downtime of waiting for a special custom ordered tubular to be manufactured. A heater that will give consistent performance over the life of the heater. Which lowers the total cost of ownership of the tool during its life.
In addition to the improved heat transfer and better quality with Nextflex, you can achieve considerable savings with:
- Hassle free procurement: Nextflex comes in a wide range of sizes and lengths (170+ unique combinations of sizes and diameters) and offers same day shipping (if ordered before 2pm EST)
- Inventory management: Knowing how critical Nextflex is for you, Nexthermal is committed to always maintaining good stock levels. So that you don’t have to carry in your inventory!
- Easy Installation: Being easy to install, Nextflex can be installed by anyone. We also provide easy installation tools and videos to support installation. So you save on installation costs!
- Terminals: Considering the complete customer experience with the product Nexthermal has developed unique connection methods for the customer to safely connect power wires. The heater comes with industry standard screw connections – further available are optional adapters that address high temperature electrical safety that fit limited space. And if there is a unique need Nexthermal has the design and sourcing to get the best, safest solution in the customers hands.
Customer Impact
Here’s how Nextflex helped one of our customers in fiberglass and forming applications not only achieve a uniform heat profile (along the center, sides, and corners) but also reduced their cycle time by 18%, reduced scrap rate to near zero, and helped them respond to high demand with less investment in capital and reduced square footage.
Nextflex heaters can be used in any industry that uses heat – manufacturing, plastic injection molding, rubber injection molding, aluminum extrusion, packaging – food packaging, medical packaging, blister packaging, 3D printing, and more.
You can learn more about Nextflex through our recent webinar at this link
Want to evaluate how Nexthermal can help solve specific heat problems in your application? Or just interested in knowing more about Nextflex?
Contact us at Nexthermal below!
Phone: +1(269)-964-0271
E-mail: sales@nexthermal.com
