Hot runners build on solid origins

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Return on investment

Despite the obvious benefits the cost and complexity of buying, setting up and maintaining hot runner systems compared to cold runners continues to deter companies from making the investment. Others point to potential for thermal degradation of the material and difficulties in carrying out colour changes as remaining disadvantages. Some applications are heat sensitive, whilst there is a perception at least that hot runners are not well suited to moulds which use very small shot sizes. Some parts, or families of parts, are also best kept attached to the runner until they reach another downstream operation, whilst low scale production makes it difficult to justify the relatively high cost of capital equipment purchases.

“Hot runners may make the mould slightly more expensive to manufacture and run, but they allow savings by reducing plastic waste [especially with continuously increasing prices for all types of resins and additives] and the cycle time [because] there is no need to wait until the conventional runners freeze,” says Milacron strategic manager of marketing for Europe, Michael Schiele.

“I suppose one could argue that if the mould will have a very short production run of less than 100,000 parts over its life it can be more difficult to justify the cost of the hot runner, but in general, the benefits can be applicable to almost every application,” says Reynolds.

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Special Feature

Hot runners build on solid origins

Return on investment