White Papers & eBooks

INJECTION MOLDING

As parts cool in the mold, they shrink, at different rates depending on resin family (amorphous vs. crystalline materials), mold design and processing conditions. For processors looking for the best material for a complex part, Plastic Components offers a “Plastic Injection Molding Material Shrink Rate Guide” with typical mold shrink rates, as well as tonnage recommendations and vent depth values, for some common to moderately used materials and high heat resins. www.plasticcomponents.com/plastic-injection-molding-material-shrinkage-rate-guide

Mold manufacturer StackTeck notes a general trend towards “shortened product life cycles” and high-volume “multiple market launches” that are posing commercial and production challenges for manufacturers of plastic parts. Its white paper “Improving Your Injection Mold ROI in a High Volume/Short Contract Environment” discusses the balance between capital cost and operating efficiency, tooling strategy, mold standardization and more. https://stackteck.com/about/whitepapers/improving-your-injection-mold-roi/

AUXILIARY EQUIPMENT

The raw materials of plastics processing are produced, shipped and handled in extremely large volumes. In the plant, they are usually handled by a pneumatic conveying system of pipes, manifolds, valves and controls that move material using a high-velocity stream of air. Conair’s “An Introduction to Automated Material Conveying” covers the advantages of pneumatic conveyance, factors to consider when installing material conveying equipment and the challenges caused by different material characteristics. www.conairgroup.com/resources/resource/introduction-automated-material-conveying/

COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic and the shortage of personal protective equipment, ventilators, testing kits and other equipment has put critical manufacturing under the microscope. Shifts in global sourcing and ever-more-complex supply chains have changed the way that the manufacturing economy adjusts to shocks. AMT, the Association for Manufacturing Technology, addresses these issues in “Opportunity in a Time of Crisis: State of the Manufacturing Technology Industry,” the first report in the series “Toward Resilience: Supply Chains in a Post-Shock Era.” www.amtnews.org/state-of-industry-wp

RECYCLING

Many plastics processing operations are facing the question of how to implement recycling on an industrial scale at the highest quality. Coperion’s “Plastics Recycling: How can plastics processing operations increase the proportion of recycled material used in compounds while maximizing quality?” looks at the current state of the technology, explains why twin screw extruders can achieve better results in many applications, and provides solutions for efficiently implementing recycling. https://tinyurl.com/y5mcjovv

Connected machines and cloud-based data storage are transforming how businesses collect, access and analyze data. The recycling industry is discovering the power of data reported by connected optical sorting equipment. Tomra’s eBook, “Digitalization – Connect to Enhance Productivity in the Recycling Industry,” describes how stored service reports, spare parts orders and product manuals improve machine maintenance efficiency, and looks at the future of advanced analytics and the development of new sorting technologies and processes that will improve efficiency and final product purity. https://solutions.tomra.com/digitalization-ebook

ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING

Designing for manufacturing is a critical part of the product development cycle; designing for additive manufacturing provides an opportunity to fabricate parts with complex geometries or require customization and reduce the number of part assemblies. The Markforged “Design Guide: 3D Printing with Composites” lays out the design workflow to optimize parts printed on the company’s composite 3-D printers for high-strength parts. https://3d.markforged.com/white-paper-composite-design-guide.html