New Lightweight bottle machinery

"lightweight dairy" machines, this family of machines may also be used for the manufacture of bottles for water, as well as juice, household chemical containers, and some industrial parts. The introduction of this family of machines caused a massive conversion in the dairy industry, with HDPE bottles replacing glass and paperboard.

Bottles may be manufactured with either a “pull-up” or “ram down” neck finish. In the United States, the pull-up finish is most common. A pull-up finish forms a pre-cut inner ring in a round, horizontal ledge at the top of the neck of the bottle - requiring a plug seal. A ram-down prefinish is capable of forming a "vertical" tube section at the top of the neck - without a horizontal ledge. This is analogous to a blowpin neck finish on shuttle machinery.
Reciprocating screw blow molding machine for lightweight dairy containers

A large number of machine configuration possibilities exist, with variations in extruder size (3.5, 4.0 and 4.5 in. diameters are typical), head size (typically 100 mm or 140 mm), clamp sizes, number of heads (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 16 head options), and downstream handling and trimming options.

Most one-gallon dairy containers are manufactured on 4-head or 6-head machines, although recently more producers have gone to 8-head machines to drive down bottle costs. It is estimated that over 2500 reciprocating screw blow molding machines for production of HDPE containers have been delivered in the United States - and over 3200 worldwide.