Getting Your Sidel SBO 20 Series Heating Lamps Right
Let’s be honest: most blowing machine headaches don’t actually come from the machine itself. Usually, it’s just the lamps. When they wear out, your heat distribution goes wonky, and suddenly your production is a mess. That’s why we made our replacement lamps for the Sidel SBO 20 Series total “drop-ins.” No fuss, no tinkering. The nitty-gritty on power We use high-voltage, short-wave infrared tubes. We’ve matched the wattage and voltage specifically for the SBO 20, so your preforms hit that sweet spot—the glass transition temperature—without torching the neck. You need that high power density to keep your cycle times fast. But a quick heads-up: keep an eye on your power supply. If you’ve got voltage spikes hitting your system, they’ll eat through your filaments way faster than they should. What’s actually inside the glass? We went with heavy-wall quartz and a halogen gas fill. Here is why that matters: the halogen cycle stops tungsten from gunking up the inside of the tube. This keeps the light clear and the heat steady for thousands of hours. Depending on which SBO sub-model you’re running, we use standard R7s or SK15 connectors. You won’t need to mess around with custom wiring or weird adapters. It just fits. Plus, we added a special coating to the quartz. It shifts the emission spectrum so the heat actually sinks into the PET material instead of just bouncing off the surface. Making it work on the shop floor Because we stuck to the standard physical footprint, these work with about 95% of the blowing equipment out there. You can swap them out during your usual maintenance window without having to adjust your oven reflectors. One last thing. These lamps put out a massive amount of heat, which means your cooling fans have to work overtime. If your oven is choked with dust, the tube temperature will skyrocket and kill the lamp’s lifespan. Do yourself a favor: clean your reflectors and double-check those fans before you wire in the new set. It’ll save you a lot of grief down the road.