Free Guidance on Molding Resins

A while back I wrote about a new app designed to help injection molders set up their processing parameters. Now, the app is available to download for free on Apple and Android devices.

Mobile Specs was launched in June 2017 by Mike Kmetz. Mike was the president and founder of IDES and developed an online, searchable database, called the Prospector, that contains property information on tens of thousands of materials from suppliers all over the world, which he sold to Underwriters Laboratories in 2012. While at IDES, Mike also developed a book-length printed “pocket guide” to processing injection molding resins.

The free app and website bring that pocket guide into the 21st century. They include data on more than 20,000 commercially available materials from more than 100 resin producers and distributors. They offer up to up to 25 molding parameters for each material. With just a few taps on your mobile device or clicks on your mouse, you’ll find the material you’re looking for and be able to access data for mold shrink, melt flow, recommended processing temperatures, drying parameters, and a bunch more. Detailed text descriptions of each plastic, along with processing notes, provide molders with a great deal of background information about the material they are processing. What’s more, the app and website offer full supplier processing guides, where available.

You can search for supplier name, generic polymer family, or specific products and grades. The information in the app is continuously updated by Mobile Specs’ engineering team.

Mobile Specs has teamed with Plastics Technology on this innovative product, and together we will be developing ways to make this tool available to molders worldwide.

You might be wondering why you’d need such a tool. These days, molders (and other processors, for that matter) need to be as nimble as possible concerning the variety materials they can run. Moreover, there has been a recent uptick in activity among material suppliers in developing new grades and formulations. Additive packages are adding new properties to materials. And now there is talk about a nylon 66 shortage. As Senior Editor Lilli Sherman has reported in articles in this magazine and in blogs, molders across a wide array of industries are considering how to meet their production obligations with rising costs and occasional supply disruptions of specific resins—like nylon 66. Suppliers are developing alternatives in response, and the end result might be a material that might be slightly different than what you’re accustomed to.

I encourage you to check out the app. You can go to the Mobile Specs website  for more information. While you there, sign up for their mailing list and you’ll be notified when you so can these same searches from your browser. The only thing you stand to lose is the headache that usually follows when you mold an out-of-spec part.