PT Blog

3D printing company Carbon (Silicon Valley) showed the first digitally manufactured polymer parts in production for Ford Motor Co. at the Additive Manufacturing for Automotive Workshop at the 2019 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit.

The parts include Ford Focus HVAC (heating, ventilation and cooling) lever arm service parts, Ford F-150 Raptor auxiliary plugs for a niche market, and Ford Mustang GT500 Electric parking brake brackets. 

While the buzz at last year’s NPE was all about Industry 4.0 and IIoT, there is also a lot going on to enable the drying process itself—as well as the plastics processes it serves—to become more efficient and produce higher quality output. Here are five of the top drying product developments in both categories from Novatec.

Get a snapshot of this technology in this short video series. WATCH HERE.

RPC Tedeco-Gizeh, the UK’s sole manufacturer of plastic vending cups, is launching an initiative to help customers recycle their used cups into second-life products. The company is working with its sister business from the RPC Group, RPC bpi recycled products, so that vending suppliers and operators who collect their own used cups can deliver them to the RPC bpi facility in Dumfries, Scotland.

From there, they will be reprocessed and blended with other recycled polymers for use in the manufacture of RPC bpi’s Plaswood. This is a lumber made from 100% recycled plastic that reportedly does not rot, splinter, crack or degrade with age and requires no maintenance. Products manufactured in Plaswood include fences, posts and outdoor furniture.

Most plastics processors with central process cooling systems don’t think much about that equipment, but they think a lot about their energy bills. And cost reduction initiatives usually focus on their primary processing equipment. If that’s you, there may be another target that could save a lot of money.

It’s your chiller.

Finland’s VTT (vtt.fi) technical research center has joined Think Beyond Plastic as an R&D partner. The collaboration was announced at the New Plastics Economy Investor Forum, held in Frankfurt, Germany on December 7, 2018.

VTT’s role is to support the New Plastic Economy Innovation Center’s innovators and entrepreneurs by offering R&D services to accelerate development of innovations in the area of circular plastics. VTT’s experts, state-of-the-art pilot plants and unique research infrastructure bridge the gap between laboratory-scale development and the commercial production of new breakthrough solutions like new materials and increased recycling of plastics. VTT’s R&D infrastructure includes a selection of lab- and bench-scale plants, as well as pilot plants, serving the major steps of the development chain.