subject: Scientific Molding Delivers High Quality, Low Lifecycle Costs [print this page] If you want top quality, minimal defects, fast production, and lower cost over the life of the product line, theres no question that scientific molding is the way to go. It is also the way to increase market share, because your reputation for high quality and performance will grow and get the attention of new prospective buyers.
Scientific molding results in the best designed and controlled manufacturing process for your productespecially if it is a high-performance, critical-tolerance part.
Scientific molding principles must be applied across all phases of part manufacture: design of the part, design and building of the tool, debugging of the tool, material selection, and the injection-molding process. Engineers with specialized expertise oversee each of these main phases:
Part designspecifics such as polymer selection, gating design, corner radii, draft, and wall thickness are determined
Tool designsteel type, gate location, venting and cooling channel layout, and ejector pin locations are selected
Tool build and debuggingthis is the heart of the scientific molding process, where program engineers conduct tests to define parameters and record data to form the template
Productionprocess technicians monitor production against template and identify and solve any issues
Scientific molding tightly controls the many variables that are critical to a successful production run by using detailed material science and precise measurement to completely understand, down to the molecular level, whats happening during each stage of the injection molding process.
For example, engineers trained in scientific molding have a thorough understanding of what is happening with the material inside the mold, especially regarding viscosity. They know (rather than guess) how the polymer flows into the tool and behaves during injection molding. By recording data when the machine is producing at peak efficiency (top productivity with minimal scrap), the engineers create a template of process parameters that can be replicated whenever:
Specification issues arise during production
An existing mold is set for a new production run
Production is moved from machine to machine
By fully understanding how all the many material and process parameters interact together at all times during production, scientific-molding engineers maintain high precision across multiple production runs. Sophisticated software and sensors monitor each phase of the manufacturing process, allowing the team to know whats happening with the material inside the mold at all times; they know how small changes in pressure, temperature, viscosity, flow rate, material moisture rate, fill time, and cooling rate impact quality of the final product and can correct any process variations with seconds.
This attention to detail eliminates annoying issues such as:
Resin optimization
Evaluating and blending color concentrates
Molding and tooling design
Process and material variations
Not meeting specs
Re-validation
Meeting regulatory requirements
Because all the data is recorded, the manufacturing process can be easily replicated as neededeven when production is transferred from one machine to anothersaving a tremendous amount of setup time. This is also essential for validating the process and meeting any regulatory requirements.
More companies are inquiring about scientific molding for their critical-use, complex parts and devices, or precision-molded plastic parts, because the standard molding procedures they have used in the past simply cannot meet their current product specifications.
By understanding each phase of product development, and all aspects of material behavior, scientific molding engineers design the most efficient process possible for the product, which minimizes or even eliminates scrapsaving money on material costs and speeding up throughput because peak production is maintained through the entire process.
by: Johnathan Greene
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