Friedrichshafen, Germany — Announcing a new product during the coronavirus pandemic is hard enough. But finding ways to introduce it to potential customers was a real challenge, said Mike Ellis, global business manager for hot runners and controllers at Husky Injection Molding Systems.

"We launched UltraShot, our next-generation injection system, at the beginning of this year, sold a number of systems around the world but haven't had the chance to demonstrate it. Here, at the Fakuma, is the first opportunity we've had to actually show it to the general public," he said.

The injection system occupied pride of place at the Husky booth, where it was molding a medical application — a diagnostic array used to identify infectious diseases.

"Our customers were molding the part — a very small, very thin, sievelike disk — in a two-cavity system that they were having problems producing even at that low cavitation. With the UltraShot technology, we were able to scale up to a production cell with eight cavities — in other words, quadruple production in that single cell. The technology makes it possible to scale up much faster and to do something that would not be possible using conventional technology," Ellis said.

"The thing about UltraShot is, when you're making a part like this, a part designer will want to know how it's done," said Jim Plumpton, product development manager for hot runners and one of the two developers of the technology.

The injection system, he explained, essentially eliminates the deficiencies of traditional injection molding processes.

"We've reengineered the injection molding process," he said. "We basically take control of the injection processes away from the injection unit. Without an injection unit, it's just a plasticizer, an extruder. The technology delivers very high pressure at the gate, so we gain a huge amount of control, far more than with conventional systems. We can control how the melt flows into the cavity."

In a normal process, he said, there's the reciprocating screw and one plunger that injects for all cavities. The melt "splits and splits," each time losing some balance and pressure from one cavity to the next.

"What we've done is we've created an injection circuit design where, instead, there's an injection plunger for every single cavity. There's no loss in pressure as it travels from the injection unit to the cavity, creating a step-change in control. So, balance and part quality do not degrade with higher cavitation tooling," Plumpton said.

And, Plumpton said, although the scalability aspects of the technology have received a lot of emphasis, it isn't purely about scaling cavitation. He pointed out that the benefits of moving from a single centralized injection control to a distributed system include being able to reevaluate part designs.

"It makes things possible that weren't possible at all before. You are no longer limited in wall thickness, resin type or by a geometry that you just couldn't fill," Plumpton said.

The biggest challenge for very complex molds is the flow rate into the cavity, he added.

"Normally, you'll inject, the flow will start coming out of the gate and then hesitate, which makes it very difficult to fill parts and kills your flow path," he said. This technology delivers the pressure close to the gate, which eliminates dealing with pressure waves that are transmitted through the melt from the injection unit, eliciting a direct response.

"So it is about scale, but that's not all it is. The other real benefit is having part designers reimagine something that's easier to use, a better medical device — something that really can provide an advantage that other designers can't provide. Not just improving profitability. But I think what we all want is to be able to say, 'This part differentiates me.' When I go to the shelf, the customer picks that because feel, look, feasibility. If we enable that creativity — from a part design perspective — then I think that has a lot of value," he said.

In other news, Husky also expanded its e-commerce capabilities with the launch of its first online configurator for hot runners and controllers, Ellis added. He said Husky had noticed mold makers demonstrating interest in low-cavitation systems — "single cavities, two drops, four drop systems" — that they wanted to be able to configure quickly and get the engineering drawings for fast.

"We developed an online tool that essentially allows mold makers to configure a Husky hot runner with all the same high-quality, high-performance aspects they would normally get, but in a simplified manner, even within minutes. Unlike competitor companies doing this, however, [it] is not a modular, pick-and-play system, but is highly customized, with everything still made by us," Ellis said.

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