Selection Criteria for Plastic Materials

The selection of plastics material for a specific application is always a challenging task. After careful consideration, the possibilities may be lessened to few and the final selection is then determined by testing. A complete and in detail understanding of material properties, behaviour, flow properties has to be considered. It requires comprehensive knowledge of the part design, process limitations, advantages and disadvantages, success and failure effects with a collective practical significance of design and manufacturing process. Wrong material selection leads to product failure.

Read full article here

Mould for Food Containers

A number of plastics are used for food containers. PET bottles, food cups, and food packaging are mostly made of plastics.
Quality control of food containers is necessary to ensure that they are hygienic and that they do not have any flash that can hurt fingers or lips so that people can feel safe about consuming food from the containers.
In addition, even quality defects such as holes or cracks are not allowed because bacteria can penetrate through them and cause the food to rot.
Some typical food containers are the following.
– Margarine container: PP
– Ice cream container: HIPS, HDPE
– Lactobacillus beverage (fermented milk drink) container: HIPS
– Pudding container: PS, PP
– Snacks container: HIPS, PP, HDPE
– Soft drinks bottle: PET

Source: Mould for Food Containers

What’s a Design

Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.

Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual.

Design is an opportunity to continue telling the story, not just to sum everything up.

Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.
Design is not the narrow application of formal skills, it is a way of thinking.

Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

Good design must be defined by appropriateness to audience and goals, and by its effectiveness, not by its adherence to Swiss design or the number of awards it wins.

Design is a means toward accomplishing the end goals of serving markets and generating profits. Furthermore, design is an element in social responsibility. Good design allows “form to complement performance.” The way things look is not irrelevant to the way things work: how they work is how they should look.

The engineer

The engineer is the key figure in the material progress of the world. It is his engineering that makes a reality of the potential value of science by translating scientific knowledge into tools, resources, energy and labor to bring them into the service of man … To make contributions of this kind the engineer requires the imagination to visualize the needs of society and to appreciate what is possible as well as the technological and broad social age understanding to bring his vision to reality.

Engineering is a great profession. There is the satisfaction of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realisation in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings homes to men or women. Then it elevates the standard of living and adds to the comforts of life. This is the engineer’s high privilege

Computer Aided Design (CAD)

Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computer systems to assist in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. CAD software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve communications through documentation, and to create a database for manufacturing.Image CAD output is often in the form of electronic files for print, machining, or other manufacturing operations.

Computer-aided design is used in many fields. Its use in electronic design is known as Electronic Design Automation, or EDA. In mechanical design is known as Mechanical Design Automation, or MDA, it is also known as computer-aided drafting (CAD) which describes the process of creating atechnical drawing with the use of computer software.

CAD software for mechanical design uses either vector based graphics to depict the objects of traditional drafting, or may also produce raster graphicsshowing the overall appearance of designed objects. However, it involves more than just shapes. As in the manual drafting of technical and engineering drawings, the output of CAD must convey information, such as materials, processes, dimensions, and tolerances, according to application-specific conventions.

CAD may be used to design curves and figures in two-dimensional (2D) space; or curves, surfaces, and solids in three-dimensional (3D) space.

CAD is an important industrial art extensively used in many applications, including automotive, shipbuilding, and aerospace industries, industrial and architectural design, prosthetics, and many more. CAD is also widely used to produce computer animation for special effects in movies, advertising and technical manuals, often called DCC Digital content creation. The modern ubiquity and power of computers means that even perfume bottles and shampoo dispensers are designed using techniques unheard of by engineers of the 1960s. Because of its enormous economic importance, CAD has been a major driving force for research in computational geometry, computer graphics (both hardware and software), and discrete differential geometry.

The design of geometric models for object shapes, in particular, is occasionally called computer-aided geometric design (CAGD).

While the goal of automated CAD systems is to increase efficiency, they are not necessarily the best way to allow newcomers to understand the geometrical principles of Solid Modeling. For this, scripting languages such as PLaSM (Programming Language of Solid Modeling) are more suitable