It had to happen sooner or later. We’re talking about fiber optics vs. thermocouples: which sensor is better at monitoring melt-temperature during the injection molding process? For years, the all-important melt-temperature monitoring process was strictly a thermocouple thing. But leave it to a Chicagoland vendor (Okay, Futaba of Japan … but they’ve been in Schaumburg…
Filed Under:Plastic Injection Molding Methods , Uncategorized
Tin can. Aluminum can. Steel can. Plastic can. Say what? Plastic can? Why not? Plastic cans are compatible with standard metal canning manufacturing systems and offer several significant advantages. Namely: No need for overriding pressure Plastic cans are capable of being double-seamed and sterilized in traditional retort systems without any overriding pressure. No need to…
Filed Under:Plastic food packaging
Twenty years is a long time in the plastic injection molding industry. Even thought the internet age had already dawned in the ’90s, a shop floor manager working in that era would most likely have been still twisting knobs and staring at analog dials. Operators still consulted printed instructions to set up equipment by hand. Pneumatically driven…
Filed Under:Plastic Injection Molding Equipment , Uncategorized
Plastic as art? You’d get a lot of guffaws from the general public, which is more familiar with artistic materials such as oil paint and metal sculpture, even glass. But plastic? Puh-leeze! But the answer is “yes,” plastic can be the raw material for art, and we can prove it, as more and more designers…
Filed Under:Plastic Injection Molding News , Uncategorized
Okay, let’s start out with a few basic concepts… Thermoplastics are formed into products when they are molten: their ultimate shape and internal structure is determined by cooling. If a malformation occurs, they can be re-heated, then reshaped, if need be. The polymer chains of thermoplastics, whether branched or linear, will stay separated and distinct…
Filed Under:Plastic Injection Molding Methods
With more and more attention focused on the effects of climate change, interest in bioplastics — which are produced from renewable biomass materials such as plant starch and vegetable fat — has grown considerably. Bioplastics can also be produced from recycled traditional plastics, which although based on petroleum, don’t add to climate change. Why? Because…
Filed Under:Plastic Injection Molding News
Even if 3D printing eventually usurps plastic injection molding — and that’s a BIG if — prototypes will continue to play an indispensable role in the production of plastic parts. Why? Simply put, prototypes are crucial to several steps which precede the actual production of parts. These include communications, engineering studies, market studies (to evaluate…
Filed Under:Plastic Injection Molding Methods , Uncategorized
Just when you thought it was safe to use the term “3D printing”, along comes “additive manufacturing”, which seems to be the current buzzword of choice among academic researchers around the world, including the UK. But really, we’re talking about the same technology, which heretofore has mostly been applied to building prototypes and turning out…
Filed Under:Plastic Injection Molding for Small Parts
A new dimension is coming to medical device manufacturing — a third dimension, if you will. It’s the marriage of 3D printing and plastic injection-molded medical devices, and it’s revolutionizing the entire med-tech industry. The reason is simple: production time. Now engineers can design a medical part in an application like SolidWorks one day, 3D print…
Filed Under:Plastic Injection Molding Medical Parts
AdvanTech manufactures a wide range of medical devices but no two are quite alike. Probably the only common denominator is their need to pass through a gauntlet of FDA approvals and clinical trials, any one of which can either delay or even kill a new product. This cumbersome approval process necessitates a sequence of…
Filed Under:Plastic Injection Molding Medical Parts