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Since 2016, Haidlmair Group of Austria has offered injection tooling incorporating a unique hot-runner nozzle design shaped like a sheet extrusion flat die. Called the Flat Die Unit (FDU), it passes melt through a long slit (roughly 120 to 280 mm long and 6, 25 or 44 mm wide) instead of a circular hole like a conventional nozzle. The result is said to be faster injection of more melt through a thinner gate opening, with lower shear and injection pressure, lower melt temperature, and up to 25% faster cycle time in several projects. Haidlmair says the FDU is particularly suitable to polyolefins, including recycled material. Up to now, the FDU has been available only with Haidlmair molds. But now, it has created a separate company, in Frankenthal, Germany, to supply the nozzles to other moldmakers. In development is a valve-gate version called FDU SLS (Slot Lock System). The new firm (fdu-hotrunner.com) is headed by Andreas Kissler, formerly Haidlmair’s FDU manager, and before that he spent 26 years with German hot-runner supplier PSG. The new company will exhibit at the Haidlmair booth at October’s K 2019 show in Dusseldorf.