Let’s face it, automated quality assurance systems such as machine vision are are not very sexy. In fact, they often fall into the same no-nonsense category as risk management, IT security, and maintenance — a necessary expense, of course, but an expense nonetheless and a drag on the bottom line. Manufacturers of plastic injection-molded parts for…
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Let the jokes begin: plastic injection molders are “high” on hemp bioplastic… They don’t want any byproducts of the crop to go to “pot” … they would like to “smoke” their competition by transitioning away from non-sustainable, un-“green” polymers to sustainable, very-green hemp bioplastic. But this is no joke: many plastic injection molders think bioplastics,…
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The medical device manufacturing industry has gone through tremendous upheaval the last few years, prompted by many factors including the Great Recession, the Affordable Care Act, the Protecting Access to Medicare Act, Clinical Lab Fee Schedule reforms and even changing consumer sentiment. These factors forced many device manufacturers, including much of the In Vitro Diagnostics…
Filed Under:medical dental plastic supplies
Consumers can get very, very attached to the packaging of their favorite products, and nowhere as intensely as beverages. Trifle with the material, color or label at your own risk, marketing experts say. So when the makers of Snapple decided to move to plastic bottles from glass, there was tremendous trepidation at Dr. Pepper Snapple…
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Let’s cut to the chase… here are the “Big Five”: Part design. Material. Mold design. Construction. Molding machine. Those are the five most vital factors in the plastic injection molding process, according to experts. They all have to be optimized vis-a’-vis each other, or you can run into big problems. In many cases, these experts…
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You don’t normally associate the words “tariffs” and “plastic packaging” but that’s exactly what many US plastic injection molding companies want President Trump to do in order to retaliate against China’s aggressive intellectual theft and government subsidies of their home-grown plastics companies. In fact, Pactiv LLC, one of the biggest U.S. plastics companies, is making…
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Large tonnage injection molding machines (>500 tons) were not much beloved by plastic injection molders for many years. They were just so, well, unwieldy for lack of a better term. Then there were the shipping costs. In a word, they were understandably high because of the sheer weight of the plastic parts which were being…
Filed Under:Automotive Plastic Injection Molded Parts , Plastic Injection Molding Equipment
Almonds taste great in cakes, breads, cereal, candy bars, even liquors. Now there’s research going on that call for a plastics recipe which includes the tasty nut as filler. Well, not the almond itself; more specifically, its shell. Almond shells enhance the strength of plastic more than most conventional materials and are being tested as…
Filed Under:Plastic food packaging , Plastic Injection Molding News , Uncategorized
It’s no optical illusion: increasingly, plastic lenses for optical applications are seen as a superior choice to traditional glass. There are many reasons but it comes down to this: polymers enable optical surfaces to join with other features of the product, chiefly mounting features, are lighter in weight, can be molded into an infinite variety…
Filed Under:Plastic Injection Molding Methods
We take it for granted in our industry: molten plastic cools and crystallizes into some preordained shape in a mold under a predetermined pressure in a process called plastic injection molding. If only it were that easy. The story begins with melted or “molten” plastics. All these polymer molecules look relatively the same at the…
Filed Under:Plastic Injection Molding News , Uncategorized