Productive Plastics: Significantly cuts production costs thanks to thermoforming technology

Thermoforming is a new plastic molding technology that is gaining popularity thanks to its speed and cost advantages. Compared to traditional injection molding process, Thermoforming can cut production from 18-20 weeks to 10 weeks for 1 batch of product.

In general, the thermoforming technology process is divided into 3 steps: First, the plastic sheet will be heated until softened, then the heated material will continue to be shaped with a mold. Once the sheets have the desired shape and harden, they will be cut off the leftovers to produce the final product.

In the shaping stage, there are two main plastic molding methods that apply Thermoforming technology: Vacuum molding and high pressure molding. The vacuum casting method uses heat and pressure to format the structure of the plastic sheets. This method can easily meet the high-speed mass production needs of Productive Plastics. Meanwhile, the high-pressure casting method is often used in cases where the order is a large size product, or requires high accuracy of details.

Regardless of the method used, the design and production time is significantly reduced compared to traditional injection molding. Productive Plastics representative said: In standard conditions (machinery and materials are always available), the implementation of the injection molding method will take 15-16 weeks to design and customize the system, while the This number has been reduced to only half since the company applied Thermoforming. Besides, production time also decreases from 3-4 weeks to only 2 weeks for 1 batch of product.

Productive Plastics made a small comparison of production costs when using Thermoforming compared to traditional injection molding technology. If calculating over 1500 pieces with dimensions of 45×50 inches, the production cost by Thermoforming is only about $ 125,000, saving $ 100,000 compared to when using injection molding technology. Not only that, the cost of making a 20×30 inch mold by injection molding technology is also twice as high as Thermoforming, and this number is increasing with larger molds.

Another advantage of Thermoforming is its high customization and ability to meet customer requirements. With the design process built on 3d models, customer changes can be met as quickly as possible.

“Shaped heat” is the solution for the plastic industry when the time to create plastic products with this technology is greatly shortened compared to traditional injection and blowing technology. Today, thanks to the help of specialized computer software, the production of thermoplastic plastic is becoming more and more simple. Instead of having to take days and dozens of manufacturers to create the plastic casing of cars as before, with thermoforming integrated with 3d models, production time is only in hours. and the production process is also greatly reduced.

Productivity and Quality Office