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Category: UK plastic industry (Page 1 of 2)

Plastic vs Metal – is cost the only consideration?

There will always be an argument for using metal over plastic, which has often been seen by both the engineering fraternity and the general public as a ‘poor cousin’. However, the field of Plastic Component Design and Production has been evolving in recent years, and should now be viewed as a technical solution that in some cases can out-perform machined or cast metal….

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Replacing a worn plasticising screw? Shouldn’t you be upgrading for better productivity!

When you buy a plastic processing machine, the plasticising screw is often supplied with a General Purpose (G.P.) design and nitrided wear resistance. In many cases the OEM won’t have been told you only process particular material grades, and a GP screw provides the biggest processing window across the spectrum of materials.

This design however, will always be a compromise….

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Looks like the Hippies were right all along!

A bit like not wearing a seat belt, most of us now feel uncomfortable about not recycling our household waste. Recycling can however be more than a way to appease your guilt as a major consumer (around a tonne of Carbon Dioxide production is saved for every tonne of re-processed material used instead of virgin), it can now also make good business sense.

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Can you achieve S.M.E.D. on a budget?

The concept of Single Minute Exchange of Die has been around for a while, but for those of us working with a limited budget or a variety of materials (with different processing temperatures), anything under an hour would be nice!  There are however some relatively inexpensive changes you can make, without having to result to budget-busting auto-tool change systems and magnetic platens….

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Has our Building Site now become a City?

The aim was to create a major resource for the plastics sector, one place to find everything you needed.  From time to time, we need to review how we are doing, so for the purposes of this Blog, I have looked at things from the perspective of a new start company looking to develop an idea for a new `widget’ that just happens to be most easily manufactured in plastic.

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What is your REAL scrap rate?

Scrap rates for the injection moulding industry are easy to calculate, but often painful to believe – it is simply the difference in weight between how much plastic you buy in, and the total weight of parts delivered. Typically this is as much as 10%, although when questioned about scrap rates companies reported to us the figures they wanted to talk about – such as “customer reject rates” of 4.5ppm or their “production reject rate” where we heard of 0.001%.  These figures are just self-congratulatory and distorted.

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Would we need to be buying in now if we hadn’t started by selling out……

It is fantastic to see UK Manufacturing enjoying a renaissance especially in the Plastic Injection Moulding sector where we have a new buzz word called ‘reshoring’. I can’t help wondering though whether too many businesses were quick to sell out to what was perceived to be the ‘Holy Grail’ in manufacturing in the first place. I wrestle with this question that is rarely asked…

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