Brian Ray, Author at Ray Products

Author: Brian Ray

This is the sixth post in our series from our Thermoforming Handbook, a guide that, until now, was only available to our customers and partners. We’re releasing the whole thing in a series of posts right here on our blog.

We’ve previously released:

If you’re someone who uses custom plastic manufacturing professionally and you’re interested in getting your own copy, just send us a message and we’ll be happy to send you one. As always, these are general guidelines. Any project or design needs to be reviewed by a qualified thermoforming professional before it goes into production, and the sooner you get one of those qualified professionals involved in the process, the smoother things tend to go. If you’re looking for a qualified professional, we know a few who would be happy to help.

Every part that comes out of a thermoforming machine must be trimmed. In 1949 when Ray Products was founded, this process was carried out with hand tools. Today, we use high-precision 6-axis trimming robots to carry out the process quickly, and cost-effectively.

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Author: Brian Ray

This is the fifth post in our series from our Thermoforming Handbook, a guide that, until now, was only available to our customers and partners. We’re releasing the whole thing in a series of posts right here on our blog.

We’ve previously released:

Open up an engineering textbook, and it’ll likely define tolerances as the “permissible limit or limits of variation.” To put it more simply, how close to your exact specification can you expect the final product to be?

Every manufacturing process has unique tolerances, and thermoforming is no different. It’s important to note that what we’re listing here are industry standard thermoforming tolerances. If you have a project that demands tolerances tighter than what is standard in the industry, we’d be happy to hear from you. Our team loves a good challenge.

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Author: Brian Ray

For people in the citrus industry, it’s common knowledge that Sunkist’s SunSort line of citrus sorters are the top of the line. So when the company was ready to upgrade the enclosure on its latest model from in-house sheet metal to a modular thermoformed design, we were thrilled to help.

The new thermoformed designs were able to help Sunkist improve durability, cut manufacturing costs and time, and help the new units stand out from the competition. Read our full case study on these vacuum-formed enclosures or head over to Plastics News, where you can read the whole story.

Author: Brian Ray

Recently, Plastics News published an interesting article with an interesting chart. The chart showed the “number of multipurpose industrial robots per 10,000 employees in the manufacturing industry.”

Essentially, it’s one measure of how advanced each country’s manufacturing sector is.

China, with just 49 robots per 10,000 manufacturing industry employees, is at the low end. South Korea, with 531 robots per 10,000 employees, is at the top of the chart. The United States, with 176, is somewhere in the middle.

So, we wondered how we stacked up.

It turns out that, if Ray Products were a country, we’d have the most advanced, most automated manufacturing sector in the world.

If only…

Author: Brian Ray

This is the fourth post in our series from our Thermoforming Handbook, a guide that, until now, was only available to our customers and partners. We’re releasing the whole thing in a series of posts right here on our blog.

We’ve previously released:

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Author: Brian Ray

This is the third post in our series from our Thermoforming Handbook, a guide that, until now, was only available to our customers and partners. We’re releasing the whole thing in a series of posts right here on our blog.

We’ve previously released:

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Author: Brian Ray

This is the second post in our series from our Thermoforming Handbook, a guide that, until now, was only available to our customers and partners. We’re releasing the whole thing in a series of posts right here on our blog. Chapter 1’s blog post is right here.

Welcome to Chapter 2 of our design guide, where we’ll learn some important design considerations when designing for thermoforming. We’ll cover draw ratios, sharp angles, undercuts, draft angles and more. Thermoforming is a very capable process, and the more you understand about its technical aspects, the more flexibility you’ll have in design.

Draw Ratios

A draw ratio is the calculation that lets you know what gauge of plastic you need to start with for any given thermoformed part.

The Importance of Stretching

Thermoforming works by stretching a sheet of plastic over a mold. The more stretching that occurs, the thinner the plastic gets.

You Want It Thick, but Not Too Thick

Using a draw ratio calculation, you can make sure you start with plastic that’s thick enough to give you the final thickness you need, but not so thick that you waste money on overly expensive materials.

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Author: Brian Ray

MFR Tech has just published an article on finding thermoforming’s sweet spot, by our very own Jason Middleton. The sweetened, condensed version is that if your plastic manufacturing project falls into the right mix of quantity, size and a couple other factors, it’s essentially impossible to find a better process than thermoforming.

Author: Brian Ray

Medical Design & Outsourcing is running an article by our CEO Brian Ray that brings together ancient Egyptian spoons, thermoforming and 3D printing.

No, seriously.

Turns out that ancient Egyptians were some of the first thermoformers. Today, the modern version of a 5,000-year-old technique is helping to power everything from electric vehicles to cutting-edge medical devices. All at a cost that makes it easy to make the jump from prototyping to production.

Hopefully when The Mummy reboots in 2017, it’ll feature Tom Cruise discovering some thermoformed ancient Egyptian artifacts, shortly before he’s attacked by the undead. Fingers crossed.

Draw Ratios

The Importance of Stretching

You Want It Thick, but Not Too Thick

How Can Ray Products Help You Today?