Hi-Tech News

This is the first of two videos built around teaching about Injection Molding machines. The first video focuses on the Injection Unit.

Our equipment list contains both the Ounces of Polystyrene that each Injection Molding machines Injection Unit or barrel will hold and the Peak Injection Pressure. The Ounces of Polystyrene is most helpful as if you have the volume of the part you are interested in, you can determine if the barrel or injection unit is large enough to make your part. Material suppliers recommend that the part volume not be lower than 20% of a barrels capacity and not above 80% of a barrels capacity.

Download this free guide to make better design choices today and start creating better products tomorrow. You’ll make design decisions that will improve everything – from materials selection and production to final finishing and end-product performance. The world-class engineers, materials experts and mold craftsmen at Hi-Tech are here to help you improve your designs and mold better components.

Hi-Tech first started manufacturing Aerospace components and assemblies in 1994. The interesting thing about this Aerospace work is that it wasn’t the traditional trim pieces or covers for the cockpit or fuselage. All of the components and assemblies that Hi-Tech manufacture go into the belly of the airplane and most have significant mechanical requirements.

Hi-Tech’s new specimen molding gives you a more accurate gauge for performance and production. Our proprietary, custom-built tools produce standard test specimens, including large plaques, tensile bars, dynatup discs and more.

The Hi-Tech Materials Selection Guide helps you ask the right questions to determine the best resins and additives for end-product performance and molding efficiency. Whether it’s PP or PEEK, glass fiber or stainless steel fiber, Engineered Thermoplastics’ wide range of performance characteristics gives you hundreds of choices.

You mean Shrinkage? Yes, Significant shrinkage!

What do Thermoplastics and Seinfeld have in common? You guessed it. Shrinkage!

Shrinkage of thermoplastics has a significant impact on both part design and tool design.

Benefits of Scale moving from Machined Prototypes to Molded Production in Thermoplastics

Hi-Tech helps our Customers utilize thermoplastics in Stock Shapes to scale up parts and assemblies from the Prototype Phase to hard tooling and the higher volumes of Injection Molding. This article will cover a basic cost profile and the benefits of molding as the volumes increase. The time and cost information is based off an actual application that Hi-Tech first machined and is now molding.

Metal Replacement or Metal to Plastic Conversions using Engineered Thermoplastics are not new in the Plastics Industry. The advantages of Thermoplastics have been leveraged for a long time to save money, decrease weight and/or consolidate the number of parts required in an assembly. Hi-Tech’s history of replacing metal in structural applications is really what shaped the growth of the company over the last 10-15 years.

In the YouTube video accessible by the link below, Hi-Tech demonstrates how improvements in the machining process can significantly reduce cycle times. This is possible thru optimization of the cutters, tool path programming and speeds & feeds. In this video, Hi-Tech is machining slab or sheet stock and producing a prototype part. This prototype part is a Hi-Tech design and will be used for demonstration purposes in other Hi-Tech Talk posts.

Common issues in producing components in Thermoplastics are known as Porosity and Voids. These issues are characterized by small bubbles or pockets found in thicker sections of molded thermoplastic parts. Generally, small bubbles are called Porosity and larger bubbles or pockets are called Voids.