Hot running boost to production

One recent challenge tackled by the company was for a rapid cycle, multi-impression medical packaging mould tool where the specified moulding material (a high-performance engineering polymer) had a known tendency to ‘string’ during the moulding process.

From the outset, the customer had specified the use of a hot runner system for the tool, however, as GB Precision director, Paul Turner, explains: “There are hot runner systems and hot runner systems, and you tend to get what you pay for. The original specification had assumed quite a simple system, which, although it would have been perfectly adequate for a less challenging application, would, in this case have resulted in a reduced cycle time and a narrower moulding window, due to the nature of the material being moulded.”

During discussions with the customer, GB Precision was able to convince them that incorporating a gated hot runner system would not only allow the optimisation of the tool design with regard to filling and cavity orientation and so reduce the moulding cycle time – the customer had been looking for a 10 second cycle, in the event the tool was able to operate on a much-reduced cycle – but the moulding window would also be substantially increased and material wastage reduced.

Mr Turner affirms: “By providing our engineering expertise at the tool design stage we were able to provide our customer with long-term benefits in his tool’s productivity. We were able to show that the initial additional cost of incorporating the more complex valve gated hot-runner system would be quickly outweighed by savings in accurate mould control, setting optimisation and waste reduction, which is particularly important in medical applications, where scrap often cannot be re-used.”

GB PRECISION www.gbprecision.co.uk