The Plastics Institute of America (PIA) at the University of Massachusetts Lowell is a not-for-profit educational and research organization dedicated to providing service to the plastics industries since 1961. The PIA is led by Prof.-Dr. Aldo Crugnola (left), executive director; Prof.-Dr. Nick Schott (right), secretary and director of educational programs; and Dr. Donald Rosato, publications chairman.
ANTEC, produced by the Society of Plastics Engineers, is the largest, most respected and well-known technical conference in the plastics industry. Since its start in 1942, ANTEC has successfully expanded from the U.S. into Europe, India and the Middle East with further expansion to global locations in 2015 and beyond.
The manufacturing of high-quality structural composite components for aerospace applications has historically involved autoclave curing, a time-consuming, high-labor, and capital-intensive manufacturing process. As the aerospace and defense industries look to lower costs, composite parts manufacturers are searching for low-cost alternatives to traditional autoclave molding processes that can produce the same mechanical performance that autoclave curing provides. Both commercial and academic research and development have been focusing on a variety of liquid molding or low-pressure consolidation processes to meet this need for lower cost "out-of-autoclave" composite molding.
The thermoforming process typically consists of heating thermoplastic sheet, film or profile to its softening point and then forcing the hot, flexible material against the contours of a mold in three ways. Injection molders are not the only plastic processors that can benefit from process simulation software.