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Plastic Injection Molding In The USA: Developing The Extrusion Process!

by Gregory Scott

For as much work that has been done in the field of the plastic extrusion process, you think it would be a more common point of topic. Already, a huge percentage of the things that we as consumers buy has gone through plastic extrusion. Since I have begun my research on this full-bodied topic, I have learned a number of interesting and exciting facts that have forced me to think about the things that have took place for me to live as comfortably as I do. From the machinery to the plastic materials used in the process, we have come such a way from where we were just a few decades ago. Thankfully, we have dedicated people who are full of ideas and the will to make them realities. It has been sincerely eye-opening to explore this industry, and I cannot wait to continue to do so. First, you should really know what plastic injection molding is and how it works.

Before trying to fill your brain with details on the subject, you should probably start with a better understanding on what exactly the subject is! Plastic extrusion is the process of taking thermosetting plastics and thermoplastics and converting them into a finished plastic product. This is done through melting, shaping, and molding the plastic material in order to fit a specific design. Then, the plastic is cut, cooled, packaged, and shipped all across the world!

First, manufacturers have to buy mass quantities of raw plastic in the form of small beads, mostly referred to by specialists as resin. Most producers mix in different dyes or colorants into the mix before the process begins. This adds to the attraction and can even allow for a greater number of customers! Often times, UV ray inhibitors are also added to the resin, for an even wider array of uses.

Following the addition of these materials into the resin, it is lifted into a truck and fed into a barrel at the front of the machine. The plastic sifts through a hole in the barrel and is then twisted at an extreme rate by an industrial screw. This screw can be a variety of sizes, all of them gigantic in size; this is no phillips screw! The screw pushes the plastic material back through the extruder cavity.

The cavity begins to heat up gradually, to the desired heat marked by a specialist before the process begins. Depending on the size of the machine, up to three heaters are sometimes used to gain the ultimate result. This makes it much less likely for the material to overheat, which can be a problem for manufacturers. If the material does overheat past the set temperature, cooling fans are automatically turned on and the heaters turned off to bring it back down to the desired temperature.

As you can see, heating the material has taken a lot of time to tune and refine in order to perfect. Thanks to the technology of machines today, batches of molten plastic are saved in places where decades ago the process may have had to start all over. When the heaters turn off and the coolers on, the molten plastic keeps itself at the average temperature by pure friction and pressure along! What an example of intuitive machine-making!

Then, the exterior shutters hit the front of the barrel, where they leave the screw and enter a filter specifically for filtering any contaminants that may be in the plastic. The filter is comprised of a series of screens which allow for optimum performance. After the molten material is fed through the filters, it enters into the final part of the machine, called a die. The die shapes and profiles the molten plastic in order to fit the design for the product at hand.

The die succeeds in shaping and molding the plastic to fit a hurricane shutter, or a piece of PVC piping. After the die does its job, the machine's work is done, and specialists come in to do one of the most delicate steps in the plastic extrusion process, cooling the shaped and molten plastic. Cooling the plastic is so important mainly because if something goes wrong, the entire process has been in vain. Most manufacturers use sealed-water baths in order to cool the product evenly and with the least possible chance of disaster.

There's absolutely no doubt that plastic manufacturing is far more important than people give it credit for. Trusted plastic molding company everywhere are working with polymer products to make your lives easier and care-free. Half of the things in your house wouldn't be possible without them!

Published December 5th, 2010

Filed in Business


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