Medical demands spur mold innovations

Focus will be on boosting productivity of tooling through multi-cavitation,Bathroom Floor tiles at Great Prices from Topps Tiles. speed,Injection molding and Plastic molding supplier， waste elimination, precise control,Your source for re-usable Plastic moulds of strong latex rubber. automation and integration of functionality in the tooling. The moves are in response to drives by health care providers and medical device manufacturers to drive down costs, while also boosting part reliability, and where possible even combat counterfeiting.

One of the highlights at the show will be brand new hot runner side gating systems for deep-draw medical parts such such as pipettes and syringe barrels.

Husky Injection Molding Systems (booth 3763) will be showing the Ultra SideGate hot runner that was introduced at the Fakuma International Trade Fair in Germany last October in a mold designed and built by Tech Mold running polyoxymethylene (POM) resin producing a 0.5 gram medical cap with 1.25 millimeter wall thickness.

"Hot runners are a critical component of the injection molding process and have a direct impact on part quality, cycle time, and resin costs," says Martin Baumann, Husky's business manager, hot runners. "Our new Ultra SideGate hot runner provides the quality, speed and efficiency that our customers demand."

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The new technology is a significant advance over simple side-gate hot runners that allow mold makers to direct gate parts that previously were gated with a cold runner. It's an important concept for the medical industry because it reduces resin costs both resin and cut 50% off cycle times.

Regrind typically cannot be used in medical components. Hot gating can also improve part quality because gate vestiges could tear latex gloves. New approaches result in close to zero vestige.

Husky says that its approach avoids use of split cavities, speeding cooling time and eliminating parting line flash. Nozzles on side-gate hot runners are mounted on the sides of the housing allowing compact tip-to-tip spacing, allowing more cavities per mold. Ultra SideGate offers tip-to-tip spacing as small as 55mm.

Molds-Masters is launching its new side gate product at NPE2012.

Melt-Cube is a new linear side gating system that permits 20% greater pitch density than circular systems. It's designed for easy tip replacement in the press. The patent-pending designis said to produce faster cycles, pristine gates and more accurate in-mold labeling molding conditions because of an additional temperature control zone at the gate.Online fine art gallery of quality original landscape oil paintings, Mold-Masters said it also yields a greater level of flow balance with its proprietary iFlow manifold brazing technology.

CBW Automation , will be running the Melt-Cube in a 16-cavity automated system producing a 5-6cc polypropylene (PP) medical syringe with IML. IML boosts branding and privates anti-counterfeiting capability.The Transaction Group offers the best high risk merchant account services, Milacron is providing the machine and the material-handling equipment for the demonstration. Tech Mold built the 16-cavity mold that is running in CBW's booth that features the high-speed IML cell with Mold-Masters Melt-Cube.

"Both these work cells really push the technology envelope. Nobody has ever run systems like these at a major trade show, but we felt it was important for people to see there is still lots of room for innovation in this industry. It took a lot of creativity, teamwork and commitment to bring these systems to NPE for the world to see. Although the teams all had significant challenges everyone worked together incredibly well and the results are truly impressive", says Bruce Catoen, Mold-Masters chief technology officer and vp business development.

Another important hot runner story line at NPE2012 for medical applications is growing use of electric control for clean room operations.

Late last year, Synventive Molding Solutions introduced its patented eGate high performance electric valve gate hot runner system that allows precise control of each valve pin's position, acceleration, velocity and stroke. It can eliminate flow lines on multi-gated parts and quickly resolve imbalance issues, according to Synventive.

Ewikon Molding Technologies says its electric valve gate provides user better control of valve pin movement compared to electromagnetic approaches. For example, process parameters such as stroke length, valve pin speed as well as opening and closing time can be adjusted flexibly.

In a unique feature the Ewikon electric drive can actuate several valve pin positions within one molding cycle, contributing to the trend of increasing function integration.

E-Drive from Mold-Masters is a new electric valve gating system designed for multi-cavitation and precision molding applications in clean room and oil-free environments. The servo motor's power is transmitted to the valve pin plate by a timing belt and two ball screws resulting in precise linear motion to open and close the gates.