GB Precision
A UK-based precision engineering and tooling firm says switching to a gated hot runner system has helped one medical moulder increase the productivity and efficiency of its operations.
GB Precision says its customer, a producer of medical packaging, is now delivering better quality products with shorter cycle times following the switch from a relatively simple hot runner to a custom-designed, gated system.
The customer was looking for a new mould tool and hot runner system suitable for a rapid-cycling, multi-impression production. It also needed to capably handle the high performance engineering polymer used for the medical packaging being produced.
“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,” explained Paul Turner, Director of GB Precision.
Turner therefore recommended incorporating a gating system to not only optimise the tool design and provide better filling and cavity orientation, reducing the moulding cycle-time, but also substantially increasing the moulding window and reducing material wastage.
“By providing our engineering expertise at the tool design stage we could provide our customer with long term benefits in the 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.”