Getting Your SIG Blomax Back Up to Speed
If you’re running an older SIG Blomax, you probably know the struggle. Your heating profiles start to drift, and suddenly your preforms aren’t hitting the right temperature. It’s frustrating. You either have to slow down your cycle speed—which kills your numbers—or you start seeing those annoying wall-thickness defects. The quickest fix? Stop fighting with worn-out IR lamps and just swap them for precision replacements. It’s the fastest way to get your capacity back. Let’s talk heat. We build these lamps specifically for the Blomax 4 through 10 series. They use high-wattage shortwave IR to punch heat deep into the PET wall without scorching the surface. But here is a tip: if you decide to jump to a higher wattage to push more bottles per minute, keep an eye on your ventilation. If the oven can’t breathe and shed that extra heat, you’re just going to burn out your new lamps faster. The nitty-gritty stuff We use high-purity quartz glass because it lets the IR light through without any interference. Most of these use R7s or Sk15 connectors. **Make sure they click in tight.**A loose connection creates an arc, and that’s a great way to fry your socket. We also add a special coating to some of our tubes. It bounces the heat back toward the preform, which saves power and keeps your machine’s reflectors from taking a beating. How to actually do it These are simple drop-in replacements. As long as your voltage matches, you don’t need to touch the wiring. But do yourself a favor:don’t mix and match. It’s tempting to just replace one or two dead bulbs, but that’s a mistake. New lamps put out way more energy than old, carbon-covered ones. If you have a mix, you’ll get “hot spots” and uneven heating. Just swap the whole set. Your heat distribution will be flat, your bottles will look better, and you can finally stop worrying about the oven.