The process of rotational molding

Rotational molding is becoming one of the most used techniques of plastic component production. You can find several Rotational molding companies in your locality. It is a simple set of four processes. You should pour the powdered form of polymer resin into the molding machine that has a mold of your component. If you start the machine to rotate and heat it, the powder inside will melt and coat over the mold. After some time, you can cool the mold to stimulate the solidification process. You can take out the solidified component by the demolding process. In this article, let us discuss the benefits and limitations of this process in brief. 

Benefits of rotational molding 

Rotational molding processes of producing plastic components has many advantages as below,

Tooling overheads

Most of the manufacturing processes will require heavy tooling that will cost more than your raw materials. But as there is no use of external pressure during the rotomolding processes, the tools can be made of cheap and light metals like aluminum. This will reduce the tooling overheads in better amounts. 

Maintain wall thickness

Wall thickness is vital in every finished product of the casting or molding processes. If your component’s final wall thickness is not uniform, there may be a lot of issues during the application of the component. Rotational molding helps in maintaining a constant wall thickness throughout your final product’s surface as the process is purely rotational. 

No defects or seams 

There will not be any interference with external pressure during the whole manufacturing process. So, the chances of defects in your product are less. Also, the mold will be shut and clamped while rotation and melting processes. Hence, you will get quality output. 

High strength

Since the process of molding is rotational, there will be a constant wall thickness all over the component. So, corners cannot be lighter than the other parts of it. It will end up in thicker corners and areas of stress-concentration, thus providing strength to your component as a whole. 

Limitations

Although rotational molding processes will be helpful in many ways, there will be some limitations also. Some of these limitations are as follows,

No automation

All the processes like tooling, operation of the machines, and many other actions involved in the production are done by manual laborers. As there is no automation for manufacturing, you would need to hire more laborers and give them wages. This may increase operational costs as a whole. 

Soft metal usage

You would use soft metal all around the processes. Although they may provide many benefits, you cannot run the machine using these soft metals for more than 3000 cycles. Hence, the repeatability of the machine will be less. You should replace it every time. So, it may also incur more expenses. 

Raw material cost

The polymer powder preparation will be costly as the materials need to be stable under such thermal conditions. You would also need several additives for production.