Acrolab supplies its’ plastic injection sector clients with solutions that have resulted in cycle reduction times as much as 95%. Clients running plastics applications typically have either cooling challenges or thermal uniformity issues, Acrolab can help with both and more. Contact us today to see what we can do for you.
Plastic Application Key Milestones
- Obtain client data
- Supply recommendations
- Provide solution(s)
- Develop client approved solution
- Design review and approval
- Engineering design, testing, and build
- Project delivery
What Can Acrolab Offer for Your Plastic Application?
Make your project as turnkey as you want it to be by choosing one or all of the services listed below.
- Engineering: engineering services
- Heaters: band, cartridge, strip, channel, plate, coil, and more
- Cooling: cooling system recommendations and support
- Temperature sensing: thermocouples or resistive temperature detectors
- Isobar heat pipes: 250X more thermally conductive than copper
- Temperature uniformity: achieve uniformity you never thought was possible
- Insulation board: perimeter and bottom thermal insulation board
- Hot/Cold plates: heated or cooled thermal plates
- Electrical schematics: electrical tool zoning and layout
- Mold boxes: Electrical mold boxes
- Temperature controllers: any style or zone size
- Assemble and install: installation and assembly of components
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Typical Plastic Application Challenges
- Removing heat from the parting surface
- Uneven curing
- Multiple injection points
- Deep part cavities
- Thermal cooling/heating recovery
- Quick cycle times
- Getting heat to the parting surface (typically thermoset)
- Large and small part sizes
- Multiple part thicknesses
- Should you heat the tool or use a heated base plate
- Number of cavities
- Sub inserts
- Thermal breaks
- Temperature uniformity
- Part delamination and warping
Tackling Uneven Curing
Uneven curing contributes to almost all part defects. This can result from not enough cooling in a tool area due to a lag in thermal recovery. If you can resolve uneven Curing, most of your headaches will be solved. You can speak with an Acrolab engineer to see how Acrolab’s Isobar technology can resolve your uneven curing issues.
- The key to even curing is understanding thermodynamics; Understand thermal challenges and you are 90% ahead of the game
- Now that you know that thermodynamics contributes to uneven curing the solution is simple, thermal conductivity. If you can replace targeted tool locations with a material that will cool or heat much faster than your tool material, most of your worries will be solved.
- You can speak with Acrolab to design and implement distributed wattage cartridge heaters to help with uneven thermoset curing issues. For your cooling issues consider looking into our Isobar heat pipe technology
Sub Insert Issues
The more sub inserts you add into your tooling the more thermal breaks you add, which can contribute to large temperature drops. To fix a thermal break issue the solution is simple, bridge the thermal break with a material that is highly conductive.
- You can use copper rods or beryllium copper to bridge these gaps. But if you want to take care of the problem efficiently it is highly recommended to use Acrolab Isobars.
- Isobars can move the heat in or out of your insert area of your tool 500X faster than beryllium copper.
- Be careful of using different types of insert materials. Each material has a thermal conductivity which dictates how quickly it can cool or heat. If you keep a consistent Material or utilize a material that has a higher “K” (thermal conductivity) value, then you can mitigate thermal issues.
