Can You Actually Get More Out of an Old Krones S24?
If you’re running an older Krones S24 blow molder, you know the headache. You want to push the machine faster, but the heating oven just can’t keep up. You end up with inconsistent preform temperatures, which means thin walls, burst bottles, and a lot of wasted plastic. It’s frustrating. You feel like you’re fighting the machine instead of running it. But here’s the thing: you probably don’t need to drop a fortune on a brand-new machine. Most of the time, the bottleneck isn’t the machine itself—it’s just that the heating elements are tired. The secret is in the heat density. The S24 uses shortwave infrared to get deep into those PET preforms. We’ve spent a lot of time tweaking our replacement lamps to pack more wattage into every millimeter of the tube. Basically, we’re shoving more energy into the plastic in a shorter window of time. That’s what lets you crank up the cycle speed without worrying about the bottles coming out uneven. Why these aren’t just “standard bulbs” We use high-purity quartz glass because these things take a beating under high voltage. If you use cheap glass, they burn out fast. Plus, we use a halogen cycle. It’s a clever little process that keeps the inside of the tube clean so the tungsten filament doesn’t gunk up the glass. It keeps the light clear and the heat steady for thousands of hours. And the best part? They’re drop-in replacements. No drilling holes or redesigning your oven chassis. You just wire them in and get back to work. One quick heads-up, though. More power means more heat. If you go with the high-output lamps, you’ve got to make sure your cooling fans and vents are actually clean. If your airflow is choked with dust and debris, all that extra heat has nowhere to go. It’ll start baking your reflectors or warping the lamp holders, and that’s a mess nobody wants to clean up. But if your ventilation is solid, upgrading your IR elements is the fastest way to get your capacity back. It stops the oven from being the “weak link” and lets the mechanical speed of the S24 do the heavy lifting again.