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The Awesome And Involved Process Of Plastic Manufacturing

by Gregory Smith

While flipping through the channels last night I stumbled upon a news report on something I've never heard of, the commonly used process of polymer extrusion. It's a wise investment among plenty of businesses and consumers around my area, and is overall quite interesting. It's simply the manufacturing process of plastic being melted, shaped into a continuous profile, and then cut to whatever length. I was very eager to see every aspect of the extrusion process and the products being made. So I motivated myself to thoroughly understand each part of the program. Who knew that the extrusion of plastic produced common items such as piping, wire insulation, and plastic sheeting? Not only those, but window frames and adhesive tape are a common product of this manufacturing process.

The actual extrusion process is a simple one, raw plastic is fed into a heated extruder cavity of cylinder. The plastic was in small bead forms, beads that reminded me of the painful days as a child with my plastic pellet gun.

Not all extrusion processes but some use ultraviolet inhibitors that are added to the raw plastic beads as well. While the plastic is in the machine, the raw plastic moves through an opening in the extruder cavity towards a screw mechanism. While this happens the screw rotates, forcing the plastic material to advance through the extruder cavity.

The temperature in the extruder cavity is a high 400 degrees F. It needs to be this high in temperature due to it needing to match up with the melting temperature of the plastic beads. It may take 3 heaters at separate times to heat down the plastic to its liquid melting point. It reduces the potential for the plastic to overheat.

Many plastic extrusion processes involve three different heaters, set to gradually increase heat inside the cavity. That will overall make overheating not an issue. It is also very interesting how so much friction and pressure builds up inside the heater that sometimes the heater will be shut off. So, so much heat is being produces on its own.

The die it is placed into is responsible for the plastics profile, after the die the plastic must be cooled. It's cooled by a sealed water bath; the water bath protects the newly formed product in its still molten state. If the plastic was being formed into a sheet a specially designed cooling roll replaces the water bath.

In this Plastic Extrusion Process Plastic sheeting cannot with stand the water cooling bath that the other plastic products go through. As a result cooling rolls are used to gently cool the sheets. The lengthy amount of time and research I put into learning about plastic extrusion payed off. Now I will be the one talking about it to my friend and others will wonder what a marvel I'm talking about. injection molded products are examples of products that are extruded. The process may change due to the exact type of plastic extrusion, but the steps it takes to extrude plastic interested me more than I thought it would have!

I was just overwhelmed with the many parts of plastic manufacturing and the products I never thought would come from it. I'm sure going to check out if any there are any plastic molding companies in my area in case I'm in need of some adhesive tape! Overall I'm glad I know the process on how most plastic molded products are made.

Published November 2nd, 2010

Filed in Business


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