Plastic product design thermoforming

Thermoformed chassis and body panels are featured on the car. The products were made initially in the USA for assembly in China. The car will weigh less than 2000 lb (900 kg). Automotive Design Composites, Inc of San Antonio, TX, designed the vehicle to have body panels and trunk formed from coextruded sheet of ABS with an ASA cap layer that will hang on a pultruded composite frame. Ceramic tooling is used to thermoform plastic products. 

Leading the processing growth was the expansion of twin-sheet and pressure-formed plastic products. Fueled mostly by advances in mold technology, material developments, and thermoforming machinery capabilities, technology improvements in the form of machine controls have led to machine designs that are faster and more consistent than was previously possible. As an example advanced materials and... 

Designers and processors to produce products at the lowest cost have unconsciously used the basic concept of the FALLO approach. This approach makes one aware that many steps are involved to be successful, all of which must be coordinated and interrelated. It starts with the design that involves specifying the plastic, and specifying the manufacturing process. The specific process (injection, extrusion, blow molding, thermoforming, and so forth) is an important part of the overall scheme and should not be problematic. 

Thermoform Packaging Product Development Design Container Label Printing Biodegradable Plastics... 

It is also difficult to determine what the end use of an item such as a plastic sheet is. If the end use is as a thermoformed three-dimensional bowl, then it is difficult to conclude that the design of the plastic sheet is maintained as an essential feature in the finished product. It is best to review the EPA s guidances on a case by case basis when the item in question is in a gray area. ... 

The extrusion process is versatile enough to be adapted to a make wide range of products. One example is blow molding to produce hollow plastic articles such as bottles. This is a combination of extrusion and thermoforming. A hollow tube called a parison is extruded from an annular die. The parison is inflated in the heated softened state inside a mold until the parison conforms to the shape of the mold. The mold is then opened and the bottle released. Another extension of extrasion is the extrusion coating in which a metal wire, paper or a metallic sheet is coated with plastic film extruded from a suitably designed die. 

---