Processing, thermoplastics barrel

Unlike injection moulding and most of the other operations, extrusion is a continuous process. Thermoplastic granules are plasticized and melted in a heated barrel and conveyed forward by means of a screw through a shaped die to produce a continuous section. The automotive products are well known ... 

In ntosl respects the process is similar to the injection moulding of thermoplastics and the sequence of operations in a single cycle is as described earlier. For thermosets a special barrel and screw are used. The screw is of approximately constant depth over its whole length and there is no check value which might cause material blockages (see Fig. 4.50). The barrel is only kept warm (80-110°C) rather than very hot as with thermoplastics because the material must not cure in this section of the machine. Also, the increased viscosity of the thermosetting materials means that higher screw torques and injection pressures (up to 200 MN/m are needed). 

Multiple-shot overmolding process uses a specialized machine with multiple plastic processing barrels and a set of pivoting molds. In this process, the substrate on which TPEs are injected are thermoplastic in nature. 

Injection molding can be used with some thermosets in addition to thermoplastics, as long as the process can be controlled such that the crosslinking or curing takes place in the mold and not in the extruder barrel. It has been used effectively, for example, with thermosetting polyester resins. Scrap runners or defective parts must be discarded, however, as they cannot be remelted. 

Injection molding is a cyclic discontinuous process used to form three-dimensional plastic parts (25. 26). Both thermoplastics and thermosets are injection molded. The process is shown schematically in Figure 11 for a reciprocating screw injection molder. This type of a machine has a screw rotating in a barrel similar to an extruder. However, here the melt flow is discontinuous and controlled via a check valve at the tip of the screw. Material is melted in the extruder, and the melt is accumulated in front of the screw tip until sufficient melt is at hand to fill the mold cavity (cavities). 

Paul Troester started manufacturing single-screw extruders (SSE) in 1892, but only in 1935 the first SSE for thermoplastics was introduced. Four years later, Paul Leistritz built electrically heated, air cooled SSE, having L/D = 10, automatic temperature control, variable screw speed, and nitrided barrel. The machine is considered prototype of the modem extmders. The SSE offered continuous processing capability, but it was notoriously poor as a mixer. Furthermore, under the standard processing conditions, a significant non uniformity in the shear history had resulted in large temperature differences of the melt, AT = 60°C. To alleviate the... 

Injection Molding The processing and equipment for injection molding of thermosetting polymers differs slightly from the conventional injection machines used for thermoplastics. Reasons are (i) the thermosetting formulation must have a short residence time in the barrel or nozzle and (ii) the injection pressure is reduced after the mold is filled. 

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