As the bottle industry has evolved from glass to mostly plastic design, blow mold making has become increasingly prevalent. As plastic becomes widely implemented in everything from bottles to car manufacturing parts, blow molded technology becomes especially important. Since the products must meet unique and specific design conditions to minimize waste and increase customer satisfaction, consistent quality is essential.
About 10 years ago, the mold industry began changing from mainly handmade work to 3D CAD work as quality control became more important from the wider ranges of plastic implementation in so many different fields of industry. For a while, implementing laser technology simply wasn’t practical, as most of their work was measuring and fabricating metal molds, which could be sufficiently measured with conventional methods.
However, as the mold industry began widely using more complicated shapes for bottles, parts, and other implementations of plastic, the benefits of non-contact laser technology outweighed the costs. In addition, improvements and developments of laser technology made it more affordable and adaptable to the manufacturing and laboratory fields.
Reverse engineering implementing 3d laser scanning technology has become an increasingly practical way to ensure quality control as the plastics industry becomes more complicated.
Reverse engineering using laser technology is especially handy when a customer has an old bottle to reverse engineer but no CAD models exist. Many molds made by companies in the 1990s no longer exist but are being re-implemented on the market. Through laser technology, the exact specifications of the model can be conveniently replicated, allowing the part to be mass produced again.
It’s also ideal when the customer has a model with complex shapes made from clay or other pliable material. Prototypes are impossible to accurately reproduce with a touch probe because of their malleability. Since accuracy must be identical, laser scanning accurately creates a digital record of the item, allowing it to be reproduced to accurate specifications.
Plastics have come a long way, as has the need for exact specificity. Laser technology allows for model reproduction that’s exact, ensuring a consistent quality that can be accurately reproduced on a product line, minimizing wastes and improving customer trust and satisfaction, ensuring the product is made correctly 100 percent of the time. Let the benefits of laser technology deliver the accuracy your plastics industry relies on for a successful production that accurately meets the demanding needs of your market.
