Get Better at Quoting Injection Molded Parts: Part 1
Follow these detailed tips to get you the jobs you want. This installment focuses on the various raw material aspects of quoting.
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The Three Causes of Screw Wear
You run the risk of wasting time and money by not understanding what’s causing your screws to wear.
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Tracing the History of Polymeric Materials: Part 1
In this series we’ll delve into a discerning look back into the history of our industry and how we all got here.
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Recycling: Expanding 'Circularity' through Advanced Recycling Technologies
Recycling and achieving circularity for materials is at the core of the plastics industry’s evolving sustainable business model. Advanced technologies will play a big role.
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Residence Time and Residence-Time Distribution—Part 1 of 2
Failing to calculate and accurately account for residence time can compromise material integrity before it’s even injected.
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Injection Molding: Understand the Link Between Feed Throat Temperature & Bridging
Save time and money by properly controlling the feed-throat temperature. In some cases—but not all—it can help you solve a bridging problem.
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Tooling: The Lowdown on Guided Ejection Systems
When, where, how and why to use them.
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Try This Approach to Clean Up Your Recycled Material
CO2 can be used as a totally “green” solvent to remove many kinds of contamination in recycled plastics without the need for toxic solvents.
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Materials: Annealing Tips for Polyamide-imide, Part 7 of 7
PAI is a material capable of achieving levels of performance that even semi-crystalline engineering polymers like PEEK, PPS, and PPA cannot. But you have to be willing to work for that performance, and the annealing process is an essential part of this.
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Extrusion: Solving Surging in Two-Stage Screws
This usually crops up when the two stages are not matched in output. The best solution is to install a pressure-adjusting valve at the discharge end of the extruder.
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How to Know When Your Process is Ready to Make Acceptable Parts
Focus on six key metrics to help you determine when a process is lined out and stable enough to start production.
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Understanding the Effect of Polymer Viscosity on Melt Temperature
Every processor should get hold of the viscosity curves for the polymers they use or contemplate using in their operations, and learn how to read them.
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Materials Part 6 of 7: Annealing Tips for Thermoplastic Polyurethanes
TPUs form physical, rather than chemical, crosslinks that can be broken by reheating. Formation of these crosslinks can be sped up by annealing, which improves a variety of properties.
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Tooling: Back to Basics On Die Springs--Part 2
Follow these steps for proper die-spring selection and installation.
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Extrusion: Evaluating Screw Design for Multi-Material Recycling
Since many plastic products are made of a combination of materials with very different melting points, careful consideration must be given to designing screws when it comes time to recycle these products.
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Materials Part 5: Annealing Tips for Crosslinked Polymers
As with semi-crystalline thermoplastics, annealing can be used in thermosetting polymers to obtain a level of crosslinking that may not be possible within the molding cycle.
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Tooling: Back to Basics on Die Springs Part 1
Some molding shops insist that all of their molds have springs to return the ejector plates. And there are lots from which to choose. Here we’ll focus on compression die springs for injection molds.
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Back to the (Re)Grind
Some amount of scrap—generated in startup, shutdown or defective parts—is inevitable. How can you reclaim regrind into new profitable parts?
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Extrusion: 'Melt-Blown' Fiber: What You Need to Know to Enter the Face Mask Market
Coronavirus pandemic has made extrusion processors curious about entering the face-mask market. But melt-blown fiber is very different from most other extrusion processes and requires specialized equipment.
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Tooling: How to Properly Size Gates, Runners and Sprues; Part 5 of 5
Get the sprue, runner and gate sizes close to ideal the first time around.
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