Thermoforming
Internal Benchmarking: Setting Targets
Last month, we discussed how to graph your plant’s “process energy fingerprint.” Now we’ll show you how to make use of that information.
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What’s Your Process Energy Fingerprint?
As we discussed in last month’s column, your plant’s “energy fingerprint” is composed of the base load and the process load.
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Know Your Plant’s ‘Energy Fingerprint’
It is commonly thought that energy use in plastics processing is fixed and uncontrollable.
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Introduction to Energy Management For Plastics Processors
Energy efficiency is one of the “hot” topics of the 21st century and plastics processors around the world are trying to come to terms with it.
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Robots Manage Logistics For Entire Packaging Plant
Inventory management may be too important to be left to people.
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Plastic Pallets Gain Ground In an Eco-Conscious World
Low-cost wood is still king, but plastics’ reusability is a growing attraction among manufacturers looking for sustainable material-handling options. The one major hurdle is today’s high resin prices.
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Investing in Planet-Friendly Packaging
Clear Lam Packaging Inc. is a mid-sized, family-owned packaging company with an enviable growth rate of over 20%/yr, unusual at a time when many mid-sized packaging companies are being bought out and disappearing. The secret, Clear Lam believes, has been its aggressive investment in R&D.
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Plug-Assist Coating Improves Surface Quality and Formability
Manufacturers and users of plug-assist tooling have a new technique to improve the surface finish and cycle time of thermoformed parts.
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Blow Molders and Thermoformers Try Plastic Rapid Tooling
Rapid prototyping (RP) equipment is increasingly being used to manufacture prototype and short-run production molds for blow molded and thermoformed parts.
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Coatings Give Aluminum Molds Cost/Performance Edge Over Steel
New cost-effective technologies are designed to make aluminum an attractive alternative to tool steels in a range of plastics molding processes. One method uses a plasma technique to convert the aluminum surface into a hard, dense, wear-resistant ceramic. Another approach uses electro-deposition to apply a surface coating with high hardness, corrosion resistance, and chemical resistance.
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