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How Did They Make That Part?

First-ever Hot Shots Injection Molded Parts Competition at the Molding 2021 Conference.

You’ll have plenty of opportunities to ask that question when you tour the exhibits at our first-ever Hot Shots Injection Molded Parts Competition at our Molding Conference, Sept. 21-23 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Ill.

Each entry will be accompanied by written information on the partners (molder, moldmaker, material supplier, etc.) who contributed to making this part; and what it offers in the categories of 1) technical sophistication in tooling, materials or molding; and 2) molding efficiency or economics. Attendees at the conference will pick a winner in each of those two categories, which will be announced at the networking reception on Wednesday evening Sept. 22.

To give you just a taste of the quality of the entries in this new competition, watch this short video of my interview with Wayne Daniel, director of business development at Canon Virginia Inc., discussing his firm’s entry.

Spoiler alert! Daniel describes how Canon, in a development project with a customer, was able to mold two plumbing pipes—one straight and 6-in. long and one S-shaped—in a family mold using Canon’s MultiMold shuttle system. To injection mold these challenging hollow shapes, especially the “S” tube with a severe undercut, Canon molded each part in two halves in one mold. After injecting that mold with 33% glass-filled nylon 66, the mold shuttled out of the clamp area, and a robot removed the parts and placed them in the A and B halves of a second mold that shuttled into the clamp. That mold was then clamped, and more nylon was overmolded to seal the two halves together. As Daniel explains, these are thick parts, and the shuttle system affords additional cooling time outside the press.

That’s just one of the entries in the Hot Shots parts competition, and we plan to post videos on this site of additional entries prior to the conference in late September. If you think you have a worthy candidate, there’s still some time to enter. Download the entry form here.

And don’t hesitate to visit the conference site to register to attend and to plan your personal agenda from among the nine conference sessions, including three concurrent sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons.

See you in Rosemont next month!

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