With Christmas fast approaching, many parents minds will be turning to toys for their children. The market is pretty cramped these days, but I'm particularly fond of an old household favourite: Legos. It feels like you can make anything from Legos now, with kits allowing the 'child' to build anything from municipal buildings to starships. But how are the bricks themselves made? How is the same excellent level of quality assured in every single brick?
The answer involves Injection Moulding; a commonly used technology for high quality, high demand products. Injection moulding uses plastic granules which are heated together into a thick ‘melt’. The melt is then forced under enormous pressure into finely detailed moulds, ensuring a supreme degree of accuracy.
But putting together an injection moulding process is no mean feat. One of the principal challenges of process design is matching the machinery with the raw material. Knowledge of the flow characteristics and thermal conductivity of the melt are invaluable in preventing poor mould filling and defects, which are both linked to poor product quality. In short, the mould designer needs to know how viscous, or thick, the material is and how quickly it cools. Once the process is designed and optimised, tests can be performed to ensure that incoming raw materials are of the appropriate quality.
The plastic used in Lego is known as Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, or ABS for short, and has excellent mechanical properties. For simulating the injection moulding of ABS, or many other plastics besides, the SmartRheo range of Capillary Rheometer systems can be used. The machinery is adaptable and can readily be converted to perform rheology (flow), pvT (pressure, volume and temperature) or thermal conductivity testing as needs arise.
Just to finish, I’m going to leave you with some awe-inspiring Lego projects from around the internet!
Jet Turbine model
A REALLY tall tower
Chess board
Two-storey house
Custom printer
The answer involves Injection Moulding; a commonly used technology for high quality, high demand products. Injection moulding uses plastic granules which are heated together into a thick ‘melt’. The melt is then forced under enormous pressure into finely detailed moulds, ensuring a supreme degree of accuracy.
But putting together an injection moulding process is no mean feat. One of the principal challenges of process design is matching the machinery with the raw material. Knowledge of the flow characteristics and thermal conductivity of the melt are invaluable in preventing poor mould filling and defects, which are both linked to poor product quality. In short, the mould designer needs to know how viscous, or thick, the material is and how quickly it cools. Once the process is designed and optimised, tests can be performed to ensure that incoming raw materials are of the appropriate quality.
The plastic used in Lego is known as Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, or ABS for short, and has excellent mechanical properties. For simulating the injection moulding of ABS, or many other plastics besides, the SmartRheo range of Capillary Rheometer systems can be used. The machinery is adaptable and can readily be converted to perform rheology (flow), pvT (pressure, volume and temperature) or thermal conductivity testing as needs arise.
Just to finish, I’m going to leave you with some awe-inspiring Lego projects from around the internet!
Jet Turbine model
A REALLY tall tower
Chess board
Two-storey house
Custom printer
No comments:
Post a Comment