This year, the injection moulding machine manufacturer ENGEL Austria GmbH (Schwertberg, Austria) held a symposium, where the latest developments and applications in the field of injection moulding and machine engineering were presented.
Among all the symposium exponents, one was really impressing to me which is part of the program for medical part production and due to my project, which was related to pharmaceutical industry, it was in special point of interest (for short overview of the pharma-mould project click here):
The part is a drip chamber with an integrated filter for blood transfusions (Figure below). It was produced on a three-component injection moulding machine (e-victory 160 combi 3K). One plasticising unit is placed horizontally, one vertically and the third one with 45° in between. As you can see in the picture, three different polymers are necessary: the needle shaped part is made of polystyrene (BASF 168 N) and the hollow body is made of polypropylene (Borealis HJ875MO).The ring combining those two parts is made of polypropylene as well (RB845MO).
The overall cycle time is 14 s and the part has a weight of 6.6 g.
The mould manufacturer is Hack (Germany) and the mould concept is quite amazing:
The injection of the needle shaped part (polystyrene) and of the hollow body takes place at the same time. The movable mould half is split into two separate mould inserts where one has the needle part and the other the hollow body. After cooling both parts down, the mould opens and the two movable mould sides turn 90° to each other for injection material to form the ring for assembling the two parts. And after ejection it can be scanned for quality and directly packed. In this way, production of hundreds of thousands parts is ensured.
Figure – Moulded part: Step 1: injection of melt for the needle shaped part and the hollow body, Step 2: turning the mould sides to each other and inject material for the ring, Step 3: ejection of the assembled part
Kind regards
Herwig