Transfer Molded
| A McDonald's spray-molded vacuum-formed cup carrier. The open slits are formed during molding. | |
Transfer molded products are usually thin walled, 1/16" to 3/16", and are the most prevalent type in use today. The process uses vacuum forming and take-off or transfer molds, where the mold is an extremely fine wire mesh in the shape of the upper/exposed surface. The fibrous slurries are frequently made up of a high percentage or entirely of recycled newspaper, which produces a relatively smooth surface on one side and a fairly smooth surface on the opposite side with good accuracy and definition.
Prior to the molding process, the mesh is mated with a vacuum chamber that draws water through the mesh into the chamber, with the mesh mold suspended above a liquid return pool. The fibrous slurry is sprayed from below onto the mold, and the vacuum draws the slurry tightly against the mesh, filling all gaps and spaces. When airflow through the mesh has been sufficiently blocked, the excess slurry falls into the return pool for recycling, and the mold advances onward to the drying process, following by separation of the mesh mold from the dried fiber plating.
Typical uses of transfer molded products are for packaging electronic equipment, cellular phones and other household and hardware items. Very high-capacity, high-speed transfer molding equipment is used to produce drink trays, cup carriers, wine shippers, egg cartons, egg trays, pulp bedpan liners, pulp urinals, fruit trays, slipper pans, commode pans, end caps, etc.
Read more about this topic: Molded Pulp, Types of Molded Pulp
Famous quotes containing the words transfer and/or molded:
“No sociologist ... should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations in his head and perhaps for months at a time. One cannot with impunity try to transfer this task entirely to mechanical assistants if one wishes to figure something, even though the final result is often small indeed.”
—Max Weber (1864–1920)
“The legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)