Dry Pucking – Equipment

Dry pucking solves a variety of concerns, with the primary one being safety.  The majority of furnaces used for in-house conversion are best suited to remelting solids. Remelting anything else, like chips, leads to excess metal loss. In a failed and unsafe effort to eliminate the loss, some manufacturers first manufacture a “near solid,” by pucking less-than-dry chips.  The hazard lies with the explosion potential of the inherently trapped moisture.

Other complications from melting moisture-containing pucks include:

• Inefficiency – due to the need to burn-off fluids
• Increased environmental responsibility from combustion of fluids, and additional emissions to monitor, capture and process
• Housekeeping from handling leaky pucks