Hi guys,
I'm currently working for a company which manufactures electrical switch gear. We manufacture almost all parts for our gear in-house including plastics. Our plastic products are mostly made through granular fed injection moulding and compression moulding but we are now expanding and have bought a BMC injection moulding machine.

Although we have an experienced team of moulders we have none with any experience in BMC so don't want to take anything for granted so i'm asking for your help.

would any of you guys have previous experience working with BMC and have any general tips that you think might help? is there any massive differences that we should be looking out for that some of you may now take as second nature from long experience?
for example we purge our machines at the end of every shift to clean them out, should this also be done with BMC and is it the same process and granules?
where we insert the material into the hopper (ours has a screw crusher) how should this be cleaned after?
Material shelf life, is it a guide or is it essential to follow?
Any typical problems that occur or assumptions that people make that should be avoided?
is there any products (greases/release sprays etc) that you have found work differently on BMC moulding?

I know this all sounds very beginner like but like i said we do not want to take anything for granted because of experience in different fields.
When we first started our journey into compression moulding we approached it with the same per-cautions, we now have 6 machines operating on 3 shifts 5 days per week so the advice definitely helps lol.

I appreciate all the help.

D.