Hot runners build on solid origins

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New materials and better reliability

Reynolds says things advanced ‘pretty dramatically’ for hot runners in the 1980s as new materials with better wear characteristics and/or thermal transfer properties have emerged, whilst improving reliability and hot runner lifecycles meant systems started to last longer between refurbishments.

“Next generation heaters have less variation in the manufacturing process and longer operating life,” he says. “Filling balance improvements have enabled further cycle time reductions, which improve the payback of investing in a hot runner.”

“In the 1980s and 1990s you had thousands of new materials coming onto the market and conquering new market segments like packaging, medical and so on and hot runner systems had to complement this,” adds Schmidt. “Reliability has increased especially with valve gate systems which allow a wider processing window in a fully automated environment whilst process control is much more efficient.”

The introduction of front gating techniques helped to simplify mould design by eliminating parting lines but perhaps more significantly hastened greater automation of the process to improve productivity whilst offering greater flexibility in the size of the components which could be produced. Further innovation in side gating followed alongside new types of moulds - from stack moulds to family and cube moulds – which cannot be produced without using hot runner technology to deliver the required melt in many cases.

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Männer first patented its cylindrical valve closure in 1981, for example, a component still used in hot runner systems today for the manufacture of tubular plastic parts, such as hyperdermic syringes, in the medical and pharmaceutical industries. Männer’s Edgeline hot runner was recently upgraded with a shut-off nozzle for lateral injection which allows for more accurate moulding using COC or COP plastics which also help to reduce waste and improve process reliability.

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Special Feature

Hot runners build on solid origins

New materials and better reliability