Getting More Out of Your Sidel Combi SF300
You don’t actually need to rip out your entire oven just to get a bit more speed out of an old Sidel Combi SF300. Most of the time, the real bottleneck is just old, tired lamps or heat that isn’t hitting the preforms where it should. The fix is simpler than you’d think: swap those worn-out elements for precision infrared lamps. It gets your preforms up to temp faster, which means you can actually move the machine quicker. The secret is in the heat density. The SF300 uses shortwave infrared to soak through the PET wall. We make sure our replacements match your original voltage and wattage exactly. Why? Because nobody wants to spend their afternoon replacing blown fuses or dealing with a fried power supply. When you switch to a higher-wattage halogen tube, you’re basically cranking up the heat flux. The plastic hits that “sweet spot” (the glass transition temperature) much faster. That’s where you find your extra speed. It’s all about the materials. We use heavy-wall quartz glass. It’s tough. It won’t bow or warp when things get scorching hot. We stick with R7s or SK15 connectors so they just click right into place. But here is the real trick: the coatings. We use specialized coatings on the quartz that push the heat directly into the PET rather than letting it bleed off into the oven walls. It’s a lot more efficient. Less waste, more heat in the plastic. Putting it into practice. These are drop-in replacements. You pull the old ones, wire in the new ones, and tweak your heating zones. Simple. Just a heads-up, though. When you push more heat into the oven, your cooling blowers have to work harder. If you go too heavy on the wattage, the ambient temperature inside the oven will climb. Just keep an eye on your ventilation so you don’t cook your electronics. One last thing:**get your alignment right.**If a lamp is even slightly skewed, you’ll get a cold spot. And a cold spot means a bottle with uneven walls, which is a headache nobody needs.