thermoset injection molding machine

Thermoset injection molding machines are neat because they can produce an object by forcing melted plastic into a mold. A mold is a kind of container that shapes the plastic into something unique. When the plastic is injected into the mold, it cools and hardens. This makes it perfectly molded to the mold! The phrase "thermoset" implies that after we form and cool the plastic, we can never get it melted again. This is quite in contrast with another category of machines known as thermoplastic machines. They are different in their operation due to the fact that the plastic in thermoplastic machines can be melted over and over again.

We begin by loading plastic into a section of the machine known as the hopper. The hopper is the plastic feeding chamber, this is a big bucket where all the plastic is kept until it is melted. You would think of this as some big bowl that contains all the ingredients before you put them all in some dish you are going to cook. We need to have enough plastic on the hopper to create the item we want.