Electrical/electronics

PolyOne Corp. (Cleveland, OH) has opened a wholly owned business development office in Seoul, South Korea in response to the "growth of consumer product design and manufacturing companies, as well as polymer processors, in the Asia-Pacific region," according to Willie Chien, president of Asia operations for the resin distributor and compounder.

Custom molder, toolmaker, and contract manufacturer Precimold (Candiac, QC) has completed the purchase of the Search & Rescue lighting division EJE Trans-Lite (EJETL) from one of its clients, Rutter Inc. of St. John's, NL, for which it had been molding all the plastic components for the past 12 years.

Styron LLC (Midland, MI) has debuted a new polycarbonate resin grade in the Americas and Europe specifically for use in optical media. Calibre 1060 DVD can be used for all optical disc applications including CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray.

The R&D pipeline has been a long one, but officials at Integral Technologies Inc. (Bellingham, WA) indicate that their conductive thermoplastic compounds, reportedly significantly more efficient than ones as yet available, are ready for broad market deployment using various thermoplastic matrices.

The problems with injection molding conventional PLA are well known, not least of which are its low heat resistance and limited injection-molding capability because of PLA’s increased cycle time. Teijin and Panasonic Electric Works announced their joint development of heat-resistant polylactide (PLA) molding compound made from 80% plant-based renewable feedstock and providing significantly reduced molding cycle time of around half that of conventional PLA compounds.

The PLA compound that Teijin Ltd. and Panasonic Electric Works Co. have developed jointly, which boasts a melting point of at least 210ºC for high heat stability, is now being marketed by Panasonic, and is reported to cut molding cycle time by about half compared to conventional PLA compounds.

Superior creep resistance at room temperature and comparable creep resistance at elevated temperatures when compared to long-glass-filled PP. That's the claim for a new polypropylene grade that gets its reinforcement from short glass fibers.

"Developing technological applications for future electronics" is the primary mission of a new research facility set up by Bayer MaterialsScience in Singapore.

Using self-developed material technologies, Bayer MaterialScience will pursue joint projects at the center with collaboration partners to create advanced technological breakthroughs in electronics. These include functional films that can be applied to flexible screens and 3D displays, and nanomaterials like conductive inks used in printed electronics or energy-efficient lighting technologies.

SABIC Innovative Plastics has developed new grades of its Ultem polyetherimide (PEI) resin, as well as Ultem-based compounds, to win medical and electrical/electronic components, with an industrial spring project in the mix for good measure.

Scale can be deceiving: $23 million in revenue from a 58-injection-machine operation serving the medical and automotive sector out of Singapore 
sounds like a fairly respectable 
processing operation.

But when you consider Beyonics Technology as a whole is a $1.1 billion electronic manufacturing services (EMS) giant ranked number 14 in the world, you realize that molding currently plays only a minor role in the company’s operations. The Singapore processing operation has, however, been earmarked for major growth.