At first glance, to watch Phil Smith at work, you probably wouldn't guess he's a welder. He sits at a bench in his shop with a blue work shirt buttoned up to the collar. He's peering through a microscope at an 8-inch lifter; in one hand is a long, thin metal rod. His foot is poised over a black...
A polyurethane mold proofing system helped Nicolet Plastics fine tune the mold for a defibrillator handle. In the foreground is the molded part; the polyurethane part generated with the mold proofing system is in the background at left. Nicolet Plastics (Mountain, WI) is a custom molder serving a...
This article continues our series of troubleshooting reports from one of the leading on-the-spot problem solvers in the molding industry. Bob Hatch is manager of technical service and customer support for Prime Alliance, the Des Moines-based resin distributor. Before his present assignment, Bob...
D ie Sliding during Injection (DSI) was developed by The Japan Steel Works Ltd., Tokyo (JSW Plastics Machinery Inc., Santa Fe Springs, CA) to overcome problems JSW technicians believe to be inherent in other processes that are used in the production of hollow parts, such as blowmolding, lost-core...
Matt Lofgren, Kendall Healthcare Editor's Note: Matt Lofgren is a molding supervisor at Kendall Healthcare Products Co. in Ocala, FL. This article is his description of a design for a new type of injection molding machine. Read it over, give us your feedback. Is it old hat? Does it make sense? What...
Figure 1. Sample Geometry. W hen designers consider using finite-element analysis, they often want a tool to simulate the effects of loading or heat. There are other, fairly well-known benefits of the finite-element method for plastics, including mold filling and cooling simulations. But there are...
The Aeron chair by Herman Miller won IDSA's design of the year award. Computer-aided engineering helped Modulus designers optimize the chair frame design, select a paint-free PET material and thus remove a step in manufacturing, and still exceed the customer's strength requirements. B usiness as...
Tomco Plastics uses a warped tool to produce this straight part: a glass-filled PPS intake manifold throttle control housing for the '97 Lincoln Mark VIII. W hen awards were handed out in the most recent SPE Automotive Innovation design competition (December 1996 IMM, p. 48), it was hard to...
Figure 1. Proposed mold modifications to uniformly encapsulate a metal ring in one shot. Pneumatics or hydraulics can be used for pin retraction. E arlier this fall Paul White, product development engineer for research and development at Finish Thompson Inc. (Erie, PA), posted this challenge on the...
W hy is shot inventory/residence time so important? The rule of thumb in shot capacity is to use no less than 20 percent and no more than 80 percent of the rated capacity of your barrel. Another way to say this: you should have no more than five shots and no less than one and a quarter shots in...
