All machines Machines High-Speed Injection Molding
Plastics and Recycling
High-Speed Injection Molding
1:21 96 bottle caps molded in under two seconds. Filmed and published by Sumitomo (SHI) Demag - Injection Molding. Plays from YouTube, nothing here is re-hosted.
What it does
Injection molding turns plastic pellets into finished parts by melting the material and forcing it into a steel mold under pressure. In the high-speed packaging class the whole cycle, including opening the tool, ejecting the parts and closing again, happens faster than most people can say the sentence.
How it works
Pellets are fed into a heated barrel where a rotating screw melts and homogenises them and accumulates a measured shot at the front. The screw then drives forward as a piston and injects that shot through a hot runner manifold into every cavity at once. The mold is held shut by a clamping unit against enormous internal pressure. Cooling channels running through the steel pull the heat out; cooling is almost always the longest part of the cycle, so mold design and water circuit design decide the achievable rate more than the machine does. The tool opens, ejectors or air push the parts clear, a side-entry robot sweeps them out and, in an in-mold labelling application, places the next set of labels into the cavities on the same stroke.
The numbers
A 96-cavity closure mold running on a high-speed all-electric or hybrid machine produces 96 finished caps in under 1.9 seconds, which is roughly 180,000 caps an hour from a single machine. Mold filling times on these presses are under 100 milliseconds. In-mold labelled packaging containers run in under 1.8 seconds a cycle including the label placement and part removal.
Who uses one
Closure and cap producers, thin wall packaging converters, dairy and food container plants, medical disposables manufacturers and automotive component moulders.
More plastics and recycling
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Water quenching instead of air cooling produces film with completely different optical and mechanical properties, and the bubble runs downward into a water ring rather than up a tower. It is an unusual process and rarely filmed. Eighty seconds that will be new to almost everyone who works in plastics.
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1:17 Plastics and RecyclingIn-mold labeling in under two seconds
In-mold labelling puts the label into the tool before the plastic arrives, so the container comes out already decorated with no second operation. Here it happens in under 1.8 seconds a cycle. A robot places the labels and takes the parts out in the same motion, which is the part that seems impossible.
Looking for one of these?
Injection molding machines, blow molding, extrusion and auxiliaries: APE buys and sells plastics processing equipment worldwide.
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