Bayer’s new dryers

Efficient, ergonomic, and easy to use, four new custom-designed and custom-built multihopper drying cells are helping a leading supplier of engineering materials, Bayer MaterialScience LLC (Pittsburgh, PA), better manage its value stream. Up and running since January, advanced cellular drying systems from Dri-Air Industries (East Windsor, CT) have replaced ovens Bayer used in its product development activities to dry its PC, PC blends, and TPU materials. In doing so they’ve successfully relieved a nagging headache. “The key reason for upgrading our approach to materials drying was to remove contamination,” says William F. Thorne, senior process development engineer at Bayer. “After all, our PC resins are used in optical media, like CDs and DVDs. Quality and consistency are our customers’ main concerns. Contaminants are detrimental to part quality, not only in optical media, but also in automotive parts, like reflectors, bezels, and headlamps. “We contacted 15 dryer suppliers,” Thorne continues. “Dri-Air was the only one that could custom-design and custom-build a system for us that would suit all our requirements.” “Actually, he did much of the initial design himself,” adds Michael Keane, DriAir’s VP of sales, pointing to Thorne.
“He’s a UMass-Lowell grad, you know.” “From my SolidWorks CAD drawings, I used two-by-fours and nails to build amock-up,” adds Thorne, smiling.