Driving past the blue awning-covered entrance at Cambridge Industries' Lapeer, MI plant, visitors pass a sign on prime parking space that declares "Supplier Parking - reserved for those extending cost savings only!" It may be a humorous reminder, but many a truism is said in jest. This Tier One...
Mark Battista, vice president at Electrovert's Metal Dispensing Div. (Providence, RI), has seen many lost-core applications succeed-his company makes the core molding and melt out equipment essential to the process and offers turnkey service in setting up a fully automated molding cell. IMM asked...
Editor's note: At the November 1995 SPE Automotive Retec in Dearborn, MI, Allan Knight from Cinpres Ltd. (Staffordshire, England) presented a paper on gas-assist injection molding that includes case studies from two automotive molders: Injex Industries' door handles for the Toyota Corolla and Chevy...
Ever wonder why so many plastic air intake manifolds are showing up under the hood lately? In addition to lower weight and cost, one of the big advantages to molding a plastic manifold vs. casting an aluminum one is the design flexibility plastics afford automotive engineers. For example, "tuning"...
Of all the things built in an injection molding shop, one of the most unusual might be a company to pass on to your children. That's one reason brothers David and Bob Smith began Magnum Machine Inc., a family-run custom injection molding and machining shop in Grand Junction, CO. Another reason was...
And that was the choice of the Intec Group, Palatine, IL, which faced either expansion or relocation of its Morocco, IN molding facility. The Intec Group is a family-owned and -operated business that manufactures custom designed insert and injection molded components for the automotive,...
When Rapistan Demag Corp. (Grand Rapids, MI) unveiled its Model 1728 conveyor, customers were impressed. Not only did the new model run faster than comparable accumulation conveyors, it also ran with only half the noise. The credit for toning down what is typically a noisy moving belt goes to the...
Few applications must adhere to the rigid specs and quality standards that medical connectors do. Want to get a jump start on meeting those goals? Try designing with processibility in mind, says Eastman Chemical (Kingsport, TN). In this first of a series from its Design Guide for the Medical...
A properly designed hot runner system can significantly reduce cycle time and resin cost. Here are several success factors, presented by Dow Plastics' Mike Martin and Ken Kerouac in Dow's TechLink newsletter, that should be considered early, in order to produce cost-effective parts when using hot...
How does one determine whether or not to incorporate automatic gate cutting into the thermoset molding process? A paper from Norman Akens of GE at the 41st Annual Thermoset Molding Conference in October gave some good guidelines. The paper was presented by Leon Meyer of Durez. The place to start is...
