In today’s world of plastic injection, there are several factors driving long cycle times. Thermal control of the mold is the most influential aspect. With the inability to evenly cool an injected part, the cycle times run long, warpage is increased and the end product is plagued with tension and stress which often ends with parts failing quality control.
Preventative Maintenance (PM) is a critical task that aims to help ensure your mold(s) run at peak efficiency by strategically investing in service and maintenance before things go very wrong and get very costly. A well executed PM program will help improve productivity and avoid costly downtime including unscheduled breakdowns. However, the trick has always been in finding the right balance to optimize your operation. Too little service and you could still incur breakdowns, among other issues, and too much maintenance you end up throwing money away.
Training, continuing education, skill development or whatever name you want to assign to it can have benefits beyond the bottom line. Why should you invest in training? There are a number of reasons why you or your organization should be looking at some form of training or continued education if you are not already doing so. In the US alone, 10K baby boomers turn 65 (the typical age of retirement) every day. While the average retirement age of a baby boomer lies somewhere between 61 and 65, it’s easy to see a growing wave of the very experienced and skilled workforce leaving the many industries, including plastics, across the US and in Europe.
Have you ever looked at the bottom of a plastic container and noticed one or more symbols molded into the part? These markings are added at the time of molding with a metal insert placed in the cavity of the mold. When the resin solidifies it bears the mark of the specific insert added. Believe it or not these markings can be extremely important and very helpful for molders and consumers alike as they guide decisions through the life cycle of the plastic part. For the molder, the markings provide key information which can include when the part was made, helping to identify a specific manufacturing lot or batch and ensuring that a reliable quality system exists. For consumers, the markings can show how the finished good can be used and possibly re-purposed through recycling.
Plastic components are in use by every industry and manufacturing these components through injection molding has come a long way. A wide range of equipment options exist depending on your application and capabilities. Generally speaking you have a choice between traditional cold runners or the more advanced hot runners. Each option comes with its own unique sets of pros and cons and so understanding the differences and how they relate to your application could have a big impact on your productivity and overall profitability.
If titles were being considered for the plastics industry in 2018, it is fair to categorize it as the year of “smart everything”. In fact, it has seen a fair bit of transformation this year both in technology and capabilities but also the mindset or direction of plastics processing in general.
From many of the industry exchanges we experienced at the beginning of the year, the comments posed were often hovering around the tenuous question of “should we or shouldn’t we invest and investigate” in any, or some of the IIoT manufacturing technologies being touted. Since then, I think it’s safe to say that more than enough software, hardware and technology has been showcased this year across the industry (and even from our own corner) to change that question and subsequent mindset.
For years, the canned food industry has been dominated by metal. There haven’t been any revolutionary changes in the canned food industry until now, with the introduction of plastic cans. The highest quality plastic cans are injection molded and manufactured using a patented co-injection molding process and are a combination of polypropylene plastic with an EVOH barrier layer. The plastic cans offer all of the same features as metal cans, with even more great benefits including:
Structural Web molding technology is a variation of Low Pressure Injection Molding (LPIM) that was developed by Milacron as a proprietary molding process on our LPIM machines. It is a process that is well suited for large part/large shot sizes with good part surface aesthetics and low molded in stresses. The process also creates a part with a dual wall section (hollow) allowing for 10% to 30% part weight savings over a solid molded part with the same part geometry.
Injection molding: A pellet goes in, and a few moments later a part comes out. Seems simple enough, but what really happens in between these points, and how can optimization of this process create value for you in your operation? What happens in the machine barrel and the hot runner can significantly impact your molding productivity and quality.
The plastics industry, understandably so, is a rather diverse industry; not unlike other large global industries. It is comprised of companies and organizations of all shapes and sizes, usually differentiated by organizational structure or revenue. Aside from the typical size comparisons of companies, the diversity extends outward in a great number of ways and categories (i.e., output product type, machine type, injection/extrusion/blow, industries serviced, supplier/mold maker/machine manufacturer/part molder, etc.); so much so that I wouldn’t pretend to be able to cover even a small fraction of it in this post. What I do want to chat about this month is more in line with the self-assessment or self-classification of the company that you currently operate. In essence, let’s talk about “What is your buying type”?
