Getting Your Infrared Lamps Right for Krones and Sidel
If you’ve ever swapped out heating lamps in a PET blowmolding oven, you know it’s not as simple as just checking the wattage on the box. It’s a bit more finicky than that. We spend a lot of time obsessing over the physical footprint and the spectral output. Why? Because if you’re running a Krones Contiform 3 or a Sidel Matrix, you need your preforms to heat up evenly. Nobody wants to deal with scorched plastic or inconsistent bottles. The heat profile matters. Moving from those old-school SBO systems to the Matrix series changed the way heat actually hits the PET. We make sure our lamps hit the exact voltage and wattage the original equipment called for. Here is the thing: if a lamp is off by even a few millimeters, or if the connector doesn’t seat just right, you’re asking for trouble. You’ll get uneven heating or, worse, electrical arcing. To stop that from happening, we use high-grade quartz glass. It can take a beating during the rapid heating and cooling cycles these machines go through every single day. No hacks, no adapters. We built these to be true drop-in replacements. You shouldn’t have to mess with your wiring or fight with the lamp holders. By mirroring the original dimensions, we’ve cut out the need for those annoying adapters. The connectors just lock into place. This is huge when you’re running at high speeds—you don’t want a lamp shifting around while the machine is screaming along. The trade-off you need to know about. Now, you might be tempted to go with higher wattage lamps to speed up your throughput. It works, but there’s a catch. More power means more heat—not just for the bottle, but for the oven itself. If your ventilation is dusty or your blowers are on their last legs, the ambient temperature inside the oven will spike. That’s a fast track to burning out your lamps way too early. My advice? Keep your cooling fans clean. It’s a simple chore, but it’s the only way to get the full life out of the quartz. We’ve got the exact match for Sidel and Krones footprints. You just wire them up, dial in your profiles, and get back to work.