Pocket Specs for Injection Molding (Book Review)

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Do you ever find yourself looking through processing handbooks and manuals to find molding data and recommended process settings for a specific grade of plastics material? Do you ever wish to have processing data handy to look up and verify while you are on the molding floor troubleshooting or optimizing the process? Not a small task to remember process settings for some 20,000 grades of plastic materials available today. Not to worry, help is here. IDES has come up with a perfect solution for your dilemma by compiling a huge amount of data in a handy pocket book. This ready reference covers just about every plastics material and their grades you will encounter in daily work environment.

Pocket Specs for Injection Molding effectively fulfils its stated purpose of providing a means for looking up recommended process settings in a quick and efficient manner. This compact (3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches) pocket book is filled with useful information starting with recommended drying temperature and time, maximum allowable moisture, maximum recommended regrind level, barrel temperature settings, process (Melt) temperature range, and mold temperature. Shrinkage, melt flow and specific gravity values are also listed for reference purposes. Materials are arranged alphabetically by generic name. Once the material is located (ABS), next sequence is the trade names, arranged alphabetically (Cycolac by GE ). Within the trade names the materials are sorted numerically first and then alphabetically (KJB). In this 7th edition, between 980 pages there are over 18,000 individual grades of resins from over 260 manufacturers!

In my professional career I have come across many molding techs that are well aware of the differences in barrel temperature settings and melt temperatures of various types of nylons such as Nylon 6, 66, 11 and 612. However, very few of them seem to know that even within Nylon 66 family barrel temperature settings and melt temperature can be as much as 40°F to 60°F different! One of the most useful benefits of having the Pocket specs for Injection Molding handy is the ability to quickly look up such invaluable information. By having to educate and encourage the molding personnel to look up the data instead of guessing or relying on their memory one can reduce rejects and improve productivity.

The Pocket Book is filled with useful information such as abbreviations for plastics materials just in case you forgot what EVA or PMMA stands for, supplier directory with phone number and website, trade name directory, troubleshooting guide, unit conversion table, links to molding related technical articles and resources and tools. Pocket Specs for Injection Molding is a must for anyone involved in injection molding and injection mold tooling. The book also serves as a great reference tool for engineers, material buyers, sales and marketing personnel, designers, researchers and laboratory technician. Metric version of the 5th edition is available in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

I recommend it highly to everyone involved in injection molding and tooling and encourage owners and managers to equip mold techs and molding supervisors with this versatile pocket book.

May 13 , 2007