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By Alan Kelsky
 Sustainable manufacturing is past being something that's "nice to have." It is now a vital aspect of the manufacturing industry. When manufacturers change their processes to make their company more environmentally friendly, people often refer to the company as "going green." Sustainable manufacturing is practiced across the globe, and companies have invested billions to make "going green" the new business imperative. Why?
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SPE Plastics Research Online
 In the microcellular-injection-molding process, supercritical fluids (SCFs, usually nitrogen or carbon dioxide) are typically blended with polymer melts in the injection-molding machine barrel. The resultant single-phase polymer/gas solution subsequently foams during the injection-molding stage, leading to the production of lightweight microcellular injection-molded parts. Compared to the development of solid parts, this fabrication process can be conducted at lower processing temperatures and pressures, leading to a reduction of the required clamp tonnage, cycle time, and energy consumption. Additionally, cell growth throughout the entire part leads to uniform packing, thereby reducing the residual stress and improving the dimensional stability.
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| Date |
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| Nov. 18 |
Injection Molding Series |
Information |
| Nov. 20 |
2015 SPE-Asean Annual Seminar |
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Plastics Engineering
The idea of the tiny house is hardly new. However, the "movement" to drastically shrink house size and cost is hardly mainstream at this point. Despite dramatically lower construction costs — typically between $20,000 and $40,000 for today’s tiny houses compared to an average of $282,000 for new U.S. houses — not that many people are willing to live in a tiny house, usually defined as ranging from 100 to 400 square feet (9-37 m2) in footprint.
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Plastics News
Mitsubishi Chemical Performance Polymers made headlines this summer with the world’s first plant-based plastic capable of replacing the mineral glass screen in smartphones, but the push of the material into Europe remains a work in progress. The Tokyo-based firm used the Fakuma show to unveil a new marketing agreement with Germany’s Grässlin Kunststoffe for its Durabio material, made from plant-based isosorbide as a replacement for the controversial chemical bisphenol A.
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Plastics Today
When Marieke Havermans’ mother-in -law died, the family was given a catalog to browse through by the funeral home from which to choose the casket they wanted. “Each and every one of them was basically dark, ugly and too expensive. For the most part, they were made of particleboard that was lined with leak-proof paper — which was not what we were looking for,” she said. “Particleboard is a cheap construction material that emits formaldehyde. There’s no dignity in particleboard.” Havermans was convinced that there had to be a better way. Her idea was simple: “Why not design a sustainable casket made of a natural bioplastic that would, in time, simply biodegrade? A casket that would not only impact less on the environment, but that would also be an attractive and affordable option for everyone,” she explained.
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Plastics News
North American selling prices for suspension PVC and PET bottle resin each ticked down a penny per pound in October, due in part to lower seasonal demand. It’s the third straight 1-cent drop for PVC in the region. Sales of the material typically slow down as cooler temperatures slow construction, PVC’s largest end market. Prices now are down a net of 2 cents per pound so far in 2015.
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MECO’s OFS Type-1, fully-split shaft seal for vacuum, low pressure, and abrasive applications. For rotating equipment in, plastics, petrochemical, metals, minerals and other process industries.
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AZoM
Solar cell efficiency mainly relies on the precise assembly of polymers. These polymers organize themselves into thin films that are many times thinner than a human hair. Presently, environmentally unfriendly solvents are used in the driving of polymer assembly. Surfactants, which are detergent-like molecules, are far greener and have been shown to also direct polymer assembly.
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Plastics Today
European Bioplastics, the European trade organization for the bioplastics industry, is predicting a robust growth of over 350 percent of the global bioplastics production capacity in the mid-term, said Chairman François de Bie in the annual market data update presented at the 10th European Bioplastics Conference in Berlin. According to the latest findings, this capacity is set to increase from around 1.7 million metric tons in 2014 to approximately 7.8 million metric tons in 2019, with as main drivers bio-based, non-biodegradable plastics, such as bio-based PE and bio-based PET.
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Nanowerk
Semiconducting polymers that absorb or emit light are used in solar cells and light-emitting diodes. But their optical properties can be difficult to predict, because they depend on how the polymer molecules are stacked together in thin films. The flat, linear polymer molecules typically lie lengthways along a substrate, like a raft of logs. Making them stand vertically, as a "forest" of polymer strands, is much more challenging but could dramatically affect the way they interact with light.
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Chem.Info
Chemical giant DuPont recently announced plans to reorganize several business units. The Packaging & Industrial Polymers and Performance Polymers units will comprise the company's Performance Materials segment, while the Protection Technologies and Building Innovations businesses will be combined under the Safety & Protection segment.
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AZoM
The device will serve as a permanent manufacturing facility for the ISS, providing austronauts at the space station with the technology and tools they need to do their job. The ISS is expected to receive the 3-D printer by early 2016 and as a result Lowe’s Innovation Lab and will become the world’s first retailer to launch a 3-D printer into space.
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AZoM
LIBs are a type of rechargeable battery. When LIBs are charged, the lithium ions move from the positive to the negative electrode, with the reverse occurring during discharging. The need for energy storage is growing day by day, and this raises the requirement for batteries of higher performance. The performance of a lithium ion battery is dependent upon several characteristics including voltage, energy density and capacity.
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Imperial College London
As manufacturing gradually moves from large factories into smaller specialized units, the scientific research has delved ever deeper into the world of micro and nanofabrication with many fields of engineering concentrating their efforts on being able to fabricate smaller structures with increasing precision. In a paper recently published in the journal Advanced Materials, researchers from Imperial report a new model that accurately predicts the fabrication of 3-D patterned polymer materials through a process known as photopolymerization.
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