The SPE Library contains thousands of papers, presentations, journal briefs and recorded webinars from the best minds in the Plastics Industry. Spanning almost two decades, this collection of published research and development work in polymer science and plastics technology is a wealth of knowledge and information for anyone involved in plastics.
Polymer recyclates have a variation in properties that can affect the end properties of recycled polymers. In this session, Dr. Mark Sullivan and Hannah Melia of Citrine Informatics will present a case study to show how AI can be used to rapidly reformulate recycled polymers to maximize the use of recyclates while consistently meeting end customer requirements. Learn from Citrine's experience from more than 10 years working in machine learning for materials and chemicals development.
Plastic manufacturing can be unpredictable. Deviations in material batches, moisture content, machine calibration, among other variables, lead to issues in manufacturing quality and final part properties. This webinar will introduce how dielectric analysis (DEA) sensors be used to directly measure material behavior in-mold. New technology has been developed to combine dielectric analysis with machine learning and material models, allowing for dynamic adjustments to machine settings, removing uncertainty from your process, and optimizing cycle times.
The material covered will include:
Fundamentals of dielectric analysis and applications for plastic processing
How dielectric analysis and machine learning can be combined for dynamic process optimization
Case studies demonstrating how dielectric analysis is being used in industries ranging from automotive composites to electronic encapsulation
Background: In Spring of 2020, Instaversal was contracted to test our newly developed conformal cooling technology, CoolTool™, against existing production benchmarks for a plastic injection molded Pipe Bracket Adapter. The Product Innovator was going through a period of elevated demand where the current cycle time of the existing injection mold tool prohibited them from meeting their demand. When cooling cycles were sped up this led to higher scrap rates due to sink marks. This left the Product Innovator with two options: delay delivery of the product to their top customer with the risk of losing the sale and potentially losing the customer or to invest in additional injection mold tools to double production capacity. To meet the customer’s demand, 100,000 parts needed to be produced in a 60-day time period. This request created conflict with the contract manufacturer. They were being asked to absorb the cost of additional molds to meet the timing or run full 24-hour (Monday-Friday) shifts over the 60-day period which would create losses in revenue by eliminating other clients’ scheduled jobs.
Designing for Six Sigma (DFSS) - A Systematic Approach to Robust Plastic Part Design
To design and manufacture today's complex plastic components, product designers are under tremendous pressure to produce robust designs at a minimum cost and in the fastest possible time. Leading author David Wright wrote in his book titled “Failure of Plastics and Rubber Products” that design issues account for almost 20% of product failures. The fact is that many errors that manifest themselves as material, tooling or processing can also be attributed to design issues. Conventional plastic flow simulation does not necessarily help diagnose and avoid common design issues.
Decisions made at the design stage impacts manufacturing quality, product cost, and delivery lead times. Taking a proactive approach by including Six Sigma philosophy upfront into the early design stage can help develop high quality, profitable products eventually bringing sustained value to customers and markets.
The Paper will discuss the Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) philosophy and best practices and tools for its incorporation into new plastic product development. This will include:
• Understanding the DFSS concept and popular methodologies such as DMAIC and DMADV
• Learning how to use DFSS Methodology in early part of plastic product design lifecycle
• Applying DFSS techniques and available simulation and DFM tools for successful implementation
Anja Falke | Friedrich-Alexander | Martin Bohn | Tim A. Osswald, May 2021
The plastic-specific material properties are often not taken into account in the specification of technical drawings of injection molded parts. As a result, tolerance requirements are specified, that are too tight and sometimes even impossible to manufacture, which result in high production expenses. To avoid this, it is necessary to coordinate the functionally required accuracies of plastic components with the technical possibilities available for injection molding production.
In this paper a systematic analysis of drawings from practice is used, to show the current state of the art regarding geometric product specification and tolerance assignment of plastic molded parts. In addition to the quantification of the number of specified features, the unambiguousness of the product specification is assessed. Beyond that, the degree of accuracy of the tolerance requirements is quantified and the manufacturing feasibility is checked in accordance with ISO 20457 in order to then determine the resulting production expense that is necessary to achieve the required tolerances. It is proven that for almost a fifth of the plastic parts tolerance requirements are specified that are not feasible to be produced in the injection molding process. Additionally, it is found that all drawings examined do contain ambiguously specified features, that do not allow for an unambiguous verification.
Thermally conductive (TC) polycarbonate was utilized as aluminum metal replacement in LED lighting luminaires, along with transparent, diffusion, and reflective polycarbonate thermoplastics in order to describe a light weight, design-friendly, cost efficient part. To assess suitability of the TC polycarbonate, the part was subjected to thermal testing. Results showed very similar thermal characteristics as aluminum.
The topic presented in this paper is not new. There are numerous reasons why sharp transitions should not be present in a plastic part. However, the number of failures that are occurring at sharp transitions is still very common. In most cases, they can easily be avoided by simply removing metal from the mold to make a smooth transition. This paper will review where most of these transitions are being found, and why they are common in critical parts. A tensile testing study was performed to better understand the effect of geometric transitions. Two cases studies are given showing why the sharp corners can significantly reduce the lifetime of a plastic part.
One of the streams from plastics waste collection is a mixed polyolefin stream, which cannot be separated completely with reasonable effort at the current technological state.
The aim of this work was to investigate the influence of the processing route, realized by different plastic processing machines, on the properties of selected polyolefin blends, made from different PP and PE grades as well as compatibilizing additives, to mimic the mixed polyolefins found in post-consumer waste.
We found, that the processing route influences the properties in regard to the shear brought into the materials – only dry-blended and injection molded blends yield lower properties than the ones which were prepared by the other processing machines. This is more pronounced when compatibilizers were added. These results show that several processing machines can be used to establish such blends, which is an important finding for mixed polyolefin stream recycling, as there not only a good mixture in the blend needs to be established, but also the processing machine has to be stable and unsusceptible to foreign materials in the stream.
Improving the reusability of plastic parts, increasing the usage of post-consumer resin (PCR), and converting mixed PCR streams into high value resins are three key challenges facing the plastic recycling industry. To address these challenges, CirKular+‚Ñ¢ products were developed by Kraton Polymers to enable plastics upcycling and circular economy solutions. These products enable multi-resin compatibilization and performance enhancement of PCR resins across a wide range of applications. By leveraging the versatile chemistry of styrenic block copolymers, polymeric additives have been developed that benefit plastic recycling in multiple ways, such as improvement in properties of recycled resins and blends of virgin and recycled resins, and compatibilization of mixed PCR resin streams. In addition, these polymeric additives provide the performance enhancement at low loading levels, which in turn leads to an excellent balance of properties and low formulation cost. In this paper, several application-specific test results and case studies will demonstrate the value of these polymeric additives.
Kim McLoughlin Senior Research Engineer, Global Materials Science Braskem
A Resin Supplier’s Perspective on Partnerships for the Circular Economy
About the Speaker
Kim drives technology programs at Braskem to develop advanced polyolefins with improved recyclability and sustainability. As Principal Investigator on a REMADE-funded collaboration, Kim leads a diverse industry-academic team that is developing a process to recycle elastomers as secondary feedstock. Kim has a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Cornell. She is an inventor on more than 25 patents and applications for novel polyolefin technologies. Kim is on the Board of Directors of SPE’s Thermoplastic Materials & Foams Division, where she has served as Education Chair and Councilor.
A Resin Supplier’s Perspective on Partnerships for the Circular Economy
About the Speaker
Gamini has a BS and PhD from Purdue University in Materials Engineering and Sustainability. He joined Penn State as a Post Doctorate Scholar in 2020 prior to his professorship appointment. He works closely with PA plastics manufacturers to implement sustainability programs in their plants.
A Resin Supplier’s Perspective on Partnerships for the Circular Economy
About the Speaker
Tom Giovannetti holds a Degree in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Tulsa and for the last 26 years has worked for Chevron Phillips Chemical Company. Tom started his plastics career by designing various injection molded products for the chemical industry including explosion proof plugs and receptacles, panel boards and detonation arrestors for 24 inch pipelines. Tom also holds a patent for design of a polyphenylene sulfide sleeve in a nylon coolant cross-over of an air intake manifold and is a Certified Plastic Technologist through the Society of Plastic Engineers. Tom serves on the Oklahoma Section Board as Councilor, is also the past president of the local Oklahoma SPE Section, and as well serves on the SPE Injection Molding Division board.
Joseph Lawrence, Ph.D. Senior Director and Research Professor University of Toledo
A Resin Supplier’s Perspective on Partnerships for the Circular Economy
About the Speaker
Dr. Joseph Lawrence is a Research Professor and Senior Director of the Polymer Institute and the Center for Materials and Sensor Characterization at the University of Toledo. He is a Chemical Engineer by training and after working in the process industry, he has been engaged in polymers and composites research for 18+ years. In the Polymer Institute he leads research on renewably sourced polymers, plastics recycling, and additive manufacturing. He is also the lead investigator of the Polyesters and Barrier Materials Research Consortium funded by industry. Dr. Lawrence has advised 20 graduate students, mentored 8 staff scientists and several undergraduate students. He is a peer reviewer in several journals, has authored 30+ peer-reviewed publications and serves on the board of the Injection Molding Division of SPE.
Matt Hammernik Northeast Account Manager Hasco America
A Resin Supplier’s Perspective on Partnerships for the Circular Economy
About the Speaker
Matt Hammernik serves as Hasco America’s Northeast Area Account Manager covering the states Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. He started with Hasco America at the beginning of March 2022. Matt started in the Injection Mold Industry roughly 10 years ago as an estimator quoting injection mold base steel, components and machining. He advanced into outside sales and has been serving molders, mold builders and mold makers for about 7 years.
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How to reference articles from the SPE Library:
Any article that is cited in another manuscript or other work is required to use the correct reference style. Below is an example of the reference style for SPE articles:
Brown, H. L. and Jones, D. H. 2016, May.
"Insert title of paper here in quotes,"
ANTEC 2016 - Indianapolis, Indiana, USA May 23-25, 2016. [On-line].
Society of Plastics Engineers, ISBN: 123-0-1234567-8-9, pp. 000-000.
Available: www.4spe.org.
Note: if there are more than three authors you may use the first author's name and et al. EG Brown, H. L. et al.
