Sneak Peek at Molding 2016

Over two-and-a-half days next March, experts from across the injection molding supply chain will gather in New Orleans offerings insights into the latest trends and technologies in this dynamic industry. Molders, material suppliers, equipment manufacturers and more will be there.

Primary tracks at Molding 2016 (March 29-31; Westin New Orleans Canal Place) currently include:

Establishing/Monitoring/Maintaining Robust Processing

Adding Value Via Automation, Assembly and Packaging

Material Drying/Handling

Tooling

Materials

Emerging Technologies

In addition to those, special breakout sessions are in the works specifically for automotive and medical injection molding. In the automotive track, presenters will address liquid color advances, effective automation, the potential for mid-sized all-electrics, preventative purging, and lightweighting batteries via molded conductive plastics, among other issues.

On the medical side, presentations will cover running Tritan in multicavity hot runner molds; using ERP software to maintain documentation and certifications; whitewall medical molding; and more.

Machine manufacturers (Arburg, Engel, Husky, Milacron, Wittmann Battenfeld, Sumitomo (SHI) Demag) will be on hand, as well as auxiliary suppliers (Conair, Novatec, UnaDyn) and material companies (Eastman Chemical, Covestro, Momentive, PolyOne). Plenty of established molders will be there (Extreme Molding, Henkel, Makuta Technics, Noble Plastics, Nypro, Tessy Plastics) as well as a newer player in Proto Labs.

Specific topics currently include:

Injection molding design of experiments

Lights out injection molding

LSR Molding

Industry 4.0

Smart packaging

Digital manufacturing

Recycled resin

Automation (collaborative, value added, automation in automotive)

Inspection (3D and predictive)

Induction heating of tools

Multi-component molding