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Tiny parts make a name for AK
20 Jul 2008
Product miniaturisation, particularly in the medical, instrumentation, automotive and micro electro-mechanical systems sectors, is placing increasing demands on the component manufacturers who supply them.
A K Industries is using Babyplast injection moulding technology to produce miniature components with intricate surface detail in a range of engineering plastics. Examples extend from the scale pointer in white polypropylene inside the handle of the newly launched Norbar “Tru Torque” torque wrench range to a host of other demanding, high-precision applications. These vary from tiny nuts, screws, needles and pins to buttons, valves, pilot jets and nozzles, from locking levers, lenses and luer plugs to spindles, impellers, gear cogs and diaphragm plates, all produced by AK at Hereford, plant.
Babyplast machines are also readily adapted to two-shot moulding and insert moulding to incorporate metal components such as magnets, fasteners, mounts, ballast weights or pressed metal contacts and terminals.
The two-shot injection moulding process allows complex mouldings from two different polymers in machine cycle. Separate but compatible materials or colours are bonded when the second material is injected into the mould, with no need for further assembly or post-processing. Incompatible materials can be mechanically connected by two-shot moulding without them fusing, in order to meet specific product design and assembly needs such as articulation or movement.
Allen Green, Joint Managing Director of A K Industries, comments:
“Our company currently runs 31 injection moulding machines up to 450 tonnes clamping force in our 40,000 sq ft air-conditioned manufacturing hall. Flexibility and versatility lie at the foundation of our ability to provide design and manufacturing solutions for almost any moulded components.
“In practice the management of demand in the present climate of fluctuations may be better achieved by using several Babyplast machines rather than one large-tonnage moulding machine to run a job for a customer.”
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