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How Compression Ratio Impacts Extruder Performance
Let’s investigate how compression ratio affects performance of an extruder processing LLDPE.
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Polymer Science for Those Who Work With Plastics: Why Entanglements — Not Just Molecular Weight — Drive Plastic Performance
Ever try running your fingers through tangled hair? Yeah … that’s not fun, but that’s what happens at the molecular level when polymer chains reach the right length. They wrap around each other, intertwine and … get stuck — and those tangles are the real reason plastics perform the way they do.
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Use a Process Assessment to Determine the Benefits of Screw-Design Modification
This type of analysis analysis will provide the converter with a clear picture of whether changes to the screw could provide economic gains through increased rate, yield, and quality.
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Polymer Showdown — PPO vs. PA66: May the Best Material Win
Second in a series, an expert from plastics engineering consultancy The Madison Group pits leading thermoplastics against each other to see how they differ in processing characteristics, chemical resistance, thermal and mechanical performance, and more.
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Screw Bounce — What Causes It and Why You Should Care
There are a lot of theories about screw bounce in injection molding it, but what’s the actual cause? Through a series of experiments, and some good old-fashioned math, the author found out.
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Moving Beyond the Relative Viscosity Curve — Determining Optimum Plastic Flow Rates: Part 1
Should injection molders consider using a range of plastic flow rates, versus the selection of one plastic flow rate from the relative viscosity curve?
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Solving Issues with Gloss
Your problem may be related to tooling, material, processing, or combinations thereof. Here’s how to find the root cause.
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EXTRUSION: Melting 101
Learn the basics on how polymer melts in a single screw. Barrel temperature plays less of a role than you might think.
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Featured Posts
How To Identify Resin Degradation in Single-Screw Extruders
Degradation can occur in many single-screw extrusion operations, and typically occurs due to minor design flaws in the screw. Here is how to track it down.
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Bulk, Solid and Melt Density: How to Calculate These Values and Why They Matter — Part 2 of 2
Understanding and calculating solid density and melt density will help molders with everything from material and machine selection to determining piece part costs.
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Optimizing Melt-Fed Single-Screw Extruders on Compounding Lines
The main problem with melt-fed extruders that are starve-fed is setting the depth of the metering channel. In this scenario, we describe how this problem was solved.
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Polymer Showdown — PC/ABS vs. PC/PBT — May the Best Material Win
First in a series, experts from plastics engineering consultancy The Madison Group will pit leading thermoplastics against each other to see how they differ in processing characteristics, chemical resistance, thermal and mechanical performance, and more.
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Polymer Science for Those Who Work With Plastics: Molecular Weight — What It Is and Why It Matters
Molecular weight might seem like an abstract concept, but it plays a crucial role in determining the behavior of plastics during processing and in their final applications.
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What You Need to Know About Roll-Cooling Design
Cooling rolls might not look like high-tech machines, but the fact is there is a surprising amount of technology involved in their design, manufacture and use. Here’s what you need to know.
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