subject: Several Techniques Of Extrusion: It's Uses, Pros & Cons And Numerous Instruments & Machinery Used [print this page] The process of extrusion has lots of types, and one of them is known as plastic extrusion. In this method, raw plastic is used and transformed to produce various things such as rods, seals, plastic tubing, adhesive tape and plastic sheets by using equipments like plastic extruders.
A few of the mostly used plastic items in plastic extrusion are nylon, polycarbonate, acetal, polyethylene, ABS or acrylonitrile butadiene styrene and acrylic.
What are the kinds of plastic extrusion?
1. Blown film extrusion
This process is used when you want to manufacture plastic films to create shopping bags and objects like that. It's generally like a normal extrusion except for the die. In this process, the die used is like an upright cylinder which has a circular opening that can be as little as a couple of centimeters in diameter to as large as at least 3 meters. One benefit of this technique is the quality variations it can provide.
2. Sheet or film extrusion
In this method, the materials are cooled by pulling them through a number of cooling rolls. They're also able to attain the preferred surface texture and sheet thickness via this technique. A process that follows this certain extrusion technique is generally known as thermoforming, in which a sheet is exposed to heat until it turns into soft plastic so you can mold it into any shape. But, if you're gonna use vacuum when doing this, the method is referred to as vacuum forming.
3. Tubing extrusion
In this method, plastic extruders are used to create tubes such as medical tubing and drinking straws. It's also like usual extrusion except for the die. In this instance, a mandrel or pin is used to extrude hollow sections. You can use one or a few die based on the number of lumens or holes necessary.
4. Compound extrusion
This process uses one or a combination of many polymers to make plastic compounds. You may use powder, liquid or pellets as feeds for injection molding & extrusion. Machinery are extremely helpful if you choose to use this process. You may get those little laboratory machines or those huge extruders found in big industries.
Those are just four of the many extrusion processes known nowadays. They have developed and improved over the years. Each of them has its own pros and cons over the others. Each also needs different types of machines.
