Look around you right now and chances are you will see not one, but several items created at least partially with plastic. Packaging, computers, cars, dishes, toys and much more are made using plastic. Of course, there are several different kinds of plastic and also quite a few methods of processing these plastics in order to make consumer products or packaging. Read on and you\'ll discover more about the world of processing plastic.
Injection molding is one of type of processing, and in this process plastic is heated and then injected into a mold. Injection molding also can be used to create products out of metal or glass, although the use of thermoplastic granules is the most common. Thermoplastic comes in many varieties, and in general, refers to a type of plastic that can be melted and molded and then returned to the original state when cooled. Injection molding is one way to process thermoplastics, and while the finished product generally is of a high quality, this method is quite expensive and many companies prefer to use thermoforming instead.
Thermoforming is a very common type of plastic processing, and as the name suggests, this process uses heat in order to create products or packaging. Large, thin sheets of plastic are heated to a specific temperature where they become malleable, and then they are fitted into a mold. This differs from injection molding in that we are using plastic sheets rather than the plastic granules or pellets. The mold that is being used might be the mold of a water bottle, a food storage container, the blister pack that holds batteries or perhaps a plastic tray that will eventually hold cookies. Literally thousands of products are created using the process of thermoforming.
Of course with injection molding, it is easy to understand that melted plastic is injected into a mold. With sheets of thermoformed plastic, there are other ways to get the pliable sheets into a mold. One method is called vacuum forming, and this simply means that the heated, moldable plastic is basically sucked into a mold with the force of the vacuum.
If your product needs to have printing on it that is either raised or recessed or perhaps has sharp edges or more details, then you probably will want to opt for pressure forming. This combines the force of vacuum along with pressure. This allows the plastic to better fit inside a mold. The thermoform sheet is pressed down from the top while vacuum also pulls the plastic from the bottom.
When looking for a company to produce your plastic products, look for one that can help you with all the details, providing a total solution that includes everything from development to production to quality control and much more. Keep in mind that the costs for production have many variables, including the amount of items that are being produced as well as the type of thermoplastic that is used during production.
