Thermoforming Archives | Advanced Thermoforming Solutions

Category: Thermoforming

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:

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.

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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Category: Thermoforming

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…

Category: Thermoforming

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:

(more…)

Category: Thermoforming

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:

(more…)

Category: Thermoforming

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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Category: Thermoforming

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.

Category: Thermoforming

Plastics News wrote an article on our GoBin project for Goodwill Industries. If you’re not familiar with the GoBin, it’s a donation collection container that Goodwill is placing in the lobbies of apartment buildings and office complexes. The bins help make donating to Goodwill easier than ever.

The article touches on one of the key ways we were able to help the charitable organization. When Goodwill came to us with the original designs, the sides of the container were split into a 3-part assembly to accommodate another thermoformer with more standard sized equipment.

Thanks to our large, 10’ × 18’ thermoforming capabilities, we were able to accommodate the same design with a 2-part assembly. Eliminating the third part helped to cut per-unit costs, improve the rigidity of the final product and make it easier and quicker to assemble the GoBins when they’re delivered on-site.

But, don’t’ take our word for it. Head over to Plastics News and read the article.

Category: Thermoforming

You might not think of the plastics industry as a violent place, but that’s only because you haven’t read the Michael Tolinski’s “Process Wars” article in the June issue of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE)’s magazine, Plastics Engineering.

Ok, maybe violent is an exaggeration. “Contentious” might be a better word.

Michael’s article covers the rise in popularity of pressure forming, first reported in our 2015 plastics manufacturing survey. It also covers some other advances in the process and even gives an injection molder a chance to present his perspective.

All-in-all, a great read. Not least of all because it quotes our very own VP of Sales & Development, Jason Middleton. Read the entire account of the plastics manufacturing process wars right here.

Category: Thermoforming

You can have the greatest robot in the world being delivered, but if you don’t have the employees who want to embrace the technology, you will have a robot that is going to sit there and do nothing.
-Brian Ray, Plastics Machinery Magazine, July 2016

Unless you’re as obsessed about plastics manufacturing as we are, you might have missed Plastics Machinery Magazine’s interview with Brian Ray, Ray Products’ president.

But don’t worry—we’re always looking out for our non-plastics-manufacturing-obsessed friends.

The interview covers some of Ray Products’ history, the changes we’ve seen over six-plus decades in the plastics manufacturing industry, advances in materials and equipment and where we see the future of plastics manufacturing headed.

So what are you waiting for? Check it out!

Draw Ratios

The Importance of Stretching

You Want It Thick, but Not Too Thick

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