Hi there!
As we posted in the welcome section, at TallerEsfèrica we built an injection machine.
We now have some information about working with plastics and these machines that might be useful for someone.
So far we’ve tried HDPE, PLA and PP, having amazing results with both PP and PLA. We have to redo the tests with HDPE. When we made them, we didn’t fully control all the parameters to properly run the injection machine.
PLA
Our fist choice was to work with PLA since it is not from fossil resources but vegetal ones, which is amazing as it is renewable.
Its melting temperature is low (from around 170ºC up depending on the composition) and the fluency is amazing. When around 190ºC is becomes quite liquid and it flows great. We think it could even fill up a mold with 0.5mm walls with our machine.
The problems we found to discard this option for now were a few. First, it is a highly hygroscopic material, meaning it has the capacity to absorbe water from the environment. When this happens, the material becomes brittle and cracks very easily, rendering it useless due to its new low mechanical properties (for our application). Before using this material for injection it needs to be cured with low (below 55ºC) temperatures to make the moist absorbed leave the material. We did it a few times leaving it for the night on a heater (less than 55ºC probably) and it worked fine. The difference is huge. Basically, if you don’t do it and the material has water in it, you won’t be able to have proper injected parts, as they will be very fragile.
Another factor that makes PLA brittle is the thermal shock. When the mold is cold at the time of injecting the parts crack very fast due to sudden contractions. These contractions aren’t bearable by the material as it becomes more brittle when having these thermal shocks. If the mold is hot (around 60ºC) the shock is lower, bringing less internal tensions and making it less brittle and capable of supporting the contractions without cracking.
PP
It isn’t as much fluent as PLA so the force needed to inject is higher, but the properties of this plastic are more interesting for our application. We inject it at about 200ºC and heat the mold at about 40ºC to help the flowing of the material. We are trying to find a way not to heat the mold, but we are not sure if it is possible yet in our particular case.
Hope this helps someone!
Cheers,
Marc and Aniol from TallerEsfèrica.
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