What Are the Different Methods of Producing Plastics for My Business?

There is a wide variety of plastic products and materials you’ll find available on the market. Considering the sheer variety of products out there, it should come as no surprise, then, that there are also many different methods of producing those plastics.

If you’re in charge of plastic fabrication at your company or working with outsourced plastic product fabrication companies in Utah to get jobs done, it’s important for you to have an understanding of the most common methods of plastic fabrication so you’ll know which are going to be the most beneficial for your company and your product. Here’s a quick overview of some of the most common methods of plastic production to help you make an informed decision:

• Plastic extrusion: This process is used to create products that have a fixed, hollow shape. The flexibility and thickness of the resulting product can vary based on your specifications. Maybe you need to make a small straw, or a pipe for plumbing or mechanical products. The process will be similar—a screw pushes plastic in liquid form through a preset mold that then gets cooled and run through an extruder. Once the material goes through a die or other metal piece, it achieves a continuous final shape. The shape can then be cut down to its desired length for the end product.
• Vacuum forming: Vacuum forming involves the use of a machine to suck out all the air that’s present between a mold and the plastic material being put into it. In this process, a sheet of plastic gets placed over the mold, and the shape starts to take form in the sheet when the air is vacuumed out. The plastic is then cooled down to harden the material, and once the process is complete, the plastic gets removed from the mold. If needed, there may be an extra step to cut off excess material. This is one of the cheaper forms of plastic manufacturing.
• Rotational molding: Rotational molding is used for thin, hollow plastic products. It involves using a powder plastic material to coat the inside of a mold. Instead of heating the plastic material, the process actually heats the mold on the outside, and the powdered plastic inside the mold then melts to that mold. This is a process often used for furniture, toys and other products involving thinner, hollow plastic material.
• Injection molding: This is the most popular type of plastic fabrication, and is effective for mass-producing plastic products. It features the use of an injection machine to heat up pellets and push that heated plastic down into a mold. You’ll be able to heat and cool the pellets multiple times—an option that isn’t available to you in other types of plastic fabrication—which results in greater flexibility in the process and significantly less waste in your production. Many products you use on a daily basis are created through injection molding.

For more information about some of the most common types of plastic fabrication, we encourage you to contact D&D Plastics, one of the premier plastic product fabrication companies in Utah.

Categorised in: Plastic Fabrication Company

This post was written by Writer