At an open house last month, HPM Corp., Mt. Gilead, Ohio, announced improvements to two injection machine lines. First, the original design of the company’s NextWave two-platen, retractable-tiebar presses has been “Americanized.” HPM acquired the design when it bought Hemscheidt of Germany in 1997. Second, in response to customer feedback, HPM has made about 20 modifications to its economically priced universal toggle machines. More than 100 of these presses have been sold since their introduction at NPE ’97. Both machine lines will be displayed in June at NPE 2000 in Chicago.
Don’t be afraid of hurting my feelings. I want the unvarnished truth. Have you ever tuned in to the “Today’s News” section of our website (www.ptonline.com)? Did you like what you saw? Do you check out “Today’s News” regularly?
An injection molding robot is no better than its end-of-arm tooling (EOAT). All the potential benefits of robots--increased productivity, quality, and safety, as well as reduced scrap--are influenced by the effectiveness with which the EOAT does its job. End-of-arm tooling may perform tasks as simple as sprue picking and demolding or as advanced as degating, insert loading, parts reorientation, and assembly.
In the past year, the Society of the Plastics Industry has lost roughly a dozen major resin suppliers to a rival group, the American Plastics Council (APC).
If you suddenly discovered an extra bundle of funds in your purchasing budget, what would you do with it? What would be the first use you would make of an extra $10,000? What about $100,000? Or $1,000,000?
DVDs are casting a new light on optical discs--quite literally, since new generations of high-density disc players are expected to use blue-green lasers with shorter wavelengths in order to read the smaller pits of new higher-density data discs.
I don't know if you noticed, but the plastics industry is enjoying a particularly fertile period for innovation in design of mixing screws--single screws, that is.
What suits these resins particularly to TP composites is their unusual ability to depolymerize in the melt phase, followed by very rapid rebuilding of molecular weight as the resin cools.
All wars are terribly wasteful, but fratricidal strife may be the saddest waste of all. I hope I'm wrong, but I see worrisome signs of such strife within the plastics industry's trade associations.
Expandable polystyrene bead molding equipment has taken on a new look in order to keep up with the need for faster insert molding. Machine builders say insulated concrete forms (ICFs) are one of the fastest growing EPS applications in North America. EPS shapes act as the forms into which concrete building foundations are poured. Plastic inserts act as spacers to hold apart the two sides of the form. After the concrete sets, the wall is now thermally insulated by the EPS, which is held in place by the inserts.