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New properties of plastic parts by flexible upgrading of single or multicomponent injection moulding machines

Country of Origin: Germany
Reference Number: TODE20160225001
Publication Date: 25 February 2016

Summary

A small German engineering company has developed modules to retrofit a broad range of injection moulding machines to enable new properties of plastic parts by sandwich-injection moulding. The SME is searching for industrial partners and research institutions for technical cooperation agreement, commercial agreement with technical assistance or license agreement to implement the modules jointly and to share its knowhow regarding the development and production of sandwich-injection moulded parts.

Description

The small German engineering company is developing 

supplementary modules for injection moulding machines and offering support to exploit them with the matching technologies, the matching materials and the matching product structures. They offer modules to retrofit a broad range of single- and multi-component injection moulding machines to enable sandwich-injection moulding processes. 

With sandwich-injection moulding (also called co-injection), plastic parts with extended properties and advantages can be produced, i.e. 

•	material cost savings with regrind as core material,

•	weight reduction by using foamed polymers in the core,

•	increase in strength by fibre reinforced polymers,

•	colour effects by different coloured polymers.

In one single process two different plastic materials are injected successively (and also shot time simultaneously) into the injection mould as skin material and core material.

The different characteristics of the skin and the core material and their combination provide a broad variety of features of the resulting multi-functional mouldings. 

Sandwich-injection moulding is currently not widespread because it is commonly connected to 2-component machines, which are by 1,2-times to 1,6-times more expensive than standard machines and the moulds must have a cold runner in the most cases.

The developed solution consists of a variety of add-on modules like 2-component sandwich nozzles and intermediate plates and their selection/design as well as of the provided knowhow of the company to select the raw materials and to configure the moulding process to reach the desired product features.



The SME is searching for industrial partners and research institutions for technical cooperation agreement, commercial agreement with technical assistance or license agreement to implement the modules jointly and to share their knowhow regarding the development and production of sandwich-injection moulded parts.

The searched partners should be active in the area of plastic parts production, the production of moulding machines or components.

The actual type of the agreement depends on the type and the needs of the partner for support.

Advantages and Innovations

The developed solution opens the way for almost all standard and multicomponent injection moulding machines to execute sandwich-injection  moulding processes with very low material efforts for the upgrade. 

This enables

•	plastic parts production in a very cost saving and 

        environmentally friendly way regarding material consumption

        (i.e. regrind as core material),

•	weight reduction of the parts by using foamed polymers in

        the core,

•	increase in strength by fibre reinforced polymers,

•	colour effects by different coloured polymers.



Depending on the type of the parts other effects, basing on possible new product features, are expected.

Stage Of Development

Already on the market

Requested partner

Industrial partners, producing plastic parts by injection moulding, are sought for upgrading their machines, joint development of sandwich-injection moulded parts.



Industrial partners, producing injection moulding machines or core parts (tools), are sought for upgrading their portfolio and retrofit their customer’s machines.



Research partners, developing new injection moulding technologies respectively parts, are sought for qualifying their technologies/parts.



The type of cooperation depends on the R&D-level of the partner and on the necessary R&D-involvement of the SME.