D-M-E North America

“Public concern about protecting the environment is increasing,” said Bob McKee, president of D-M-E. “The introduction of new bio-degradable resins and bio-based resins will continue to grow as landfills reach capacity and oil prices rise. D-M-E is committed to being an essential resource to our customers who adopt these eco-friendly resins.”

Injection molding grade PLA is a “green” material with applications that mirror those of GPPS (general purpose polystyrene) with some characteristics of PET (polyethylene terephthalate). Injection molding of PLA places unique constraints on both tooling and processing. The material is hyper-sensitive to temperature and degrades readily into highly corrosive acids. In normal operation, PLA and similar materials tend to plate out these acids onto the walls of the molding system.

To date, no other hot runner manufacturer produces and sells a hot runner nozzle assembly that is geared and optimized for processing starch-based resins like PLA.

“Until now, molders have been getting by with special order stainless steel parts to meet their needs,” said Bob Ameel, global business manager for hot runners at D-M-E. “Eco-Smart allows processors to optimize their molding and have better quality parts and less rejects due to heat and flow issues.” 

Eco-Smart features corrosion-resistant components and addresses the low pressure requirements and cooling issues that PLA users face. It promises an uninterrupted material flow path for reduced sheer and a thermal isolation component design for reduced sheer. Eco-Smart Hot Runner Systems incorporate D-M-E’s global manifold and components standards to ensure that it provides operational excellence anywhere in the world.

The market for renewable/industrially compostable resins is continuously growing. D-M-E is qualifying additional polymers for use with the Eco-Smart as they become available.