Today I had a customer who had very little experience with sizing a heater band while it was on the machine. We have done a few orders together in the past. By the time the heaters arrived to the customer and he tried to put them on the machine they were to large the first time and to small the second. The reason come to find out was because he was measuring the heaters on the barrel incorrectly.

Scot and Matt went for a visit to his shop and showed his guys how to measure a band while on the machine. They explained the only real dimension we needed from the heater its self is the width. To Calculate the Id we can use the barrel circumference. Once we have that number you divide it by 3.1415 that gives you the Id of the heater then using the width of the band and that is the correct  heater size.

The voltage we had however he did not know the watts so we used the max under warranty for the band size. The other problem we ran in to was that he was using two different smaller heaters in a space that should have been used for one larger heater. There are a few benefits of having one larger heater in the place of two small ones the first is you can achieve lower amps and be able to use higher wattage with the larger element due to its mass per square inch. Since amps are the amount of flow for electricity the lower the amps the more money you save on electricity cost. You can also save money by doing it this was by being able to use smaller brackets and gage wire. Over all compared to his normal spending on that machine for heaters we were able to save him 20%.