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The Process Of Structural Foam Molding

By Marissa Potter


People use plastics every day. It seems as if there is a type of plastic for every purpose you can think of. Different plastic products are manufactured in different ways. One of these is structural foam molding.

This method of processing plastics is a kind of injection molding. Injection molding is one of the most widespread ways of making plastic products. Basically the polymer is melted and then forced into the mold.

Structural foam molding is commonly used in the processing of thermoplastics. Thermoplastics are made from polymer resins. They become liquid when you heat them and when you cool them, they become hard again. You can repeat this process over and over again. This makes thermoplastics very suitable for recycling.

In the injection method conventionally used to produce plastic parts, an extremely high pressure is applied to get the polymer to flow into the mold. When using the structural foam method to process thermoplastics, however, low pressure is applied instead. There are two methods of making the polymer flow into the mold at low pressure.

One method requires the use of a specialized machine. This machine injects the liquid polymer with an inert gas, which makes the polymer frothy. The froth then flows into the mold and spreads throughout it.

Another method is to use polymer that has special chemicals added to it. These chemicals act as blowing agents. When the polymer melts, the blowing agents cause a chemical reaction which releases gases. These gases then cause the polymer to froth. For this method, you can use conventional molding machines.

No matter what method is used to get the frothy polymer into the mold, the end product is the same. It is a thermoplastic that has five to fifteen millimeter thick outer walls that make it strong, hard and impact resistant. The center is foamy so that the plastic part is light. It is also a good insulator against sound and changes in temperature.

One of the main advantages of applying low pressure to produce a foaming action is that the frothy polymer can spread much further throughout the mold. This makes it ideal to fill up large molds. The result is that only the size of the machines can really limit the size of the parts it is possible to produce.

While other injection methods use molds made of steel, the structural foam method uses aluminum molds. These are not only lighter, but also much cheaper to use. In addition, the cost of setting up the tools and machines for this process is lower too. This improved cost efficiency makes the method ideal for producing parts in low volumes.

Structural foam molding is typically used for processing thermoplastics like high density polyethylene (HDPE), acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) and polypropylene (PP). Polyethylene is usually the material that car gas tanks, pipes and plastic bottles for beverages are made of. ABS is a material used to make trimmings for car interiors and exteriors, waste pipes, pipe fittings and the outer shells that house electronic products like computers. PP is the material that most syringes, plastic beakers and some car interior fittings are made of.




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