As mentioned in my blog earlier, we have started our material injection tests at puchong (sorry Jamie, couldn’t meet you for a coffee. I was fully occupied all the time!) and the mould fabrication was ahead of schedule! I was really impressed at the speed which they got the new mould out.
Well, handling the plastic injection machines would not be something that anybody liked to do because of the uncomfortable atmosphere surrounding it. The machines were running at 200degC while the hot water machines were running in excess of 70deg and not to mention, the ‘hopper dryer’ which would be used for drying the material is running in excess of 100deg as well. I’ll leave it to your imagination of how hot the place can be. At the same time, you seriously need experienced people to run these machines as they are the only ones whom would know how to adjust the machines to get the desired results. As I had expected earlier, the path to realization of this product into the mass market would not be easy and today, the first hurdle had came into picture.
It was tense when the mould was loaded onto the injection machine. As the Thermoplastic Elastomer (TPE) was injected into the mould, everybody was standing by the side of the machine with our sweat dripping from our foreheads, eager to see the results. Well, from the samples withdrawn during the first few rounds of injection, the shape of the product looked ok while texture of it was at a satisfactory level. However, after several more rounds of injecting the material into the mould, problems arise and the first one to rear its ugly head is that we could not ‘compact’ the material further and the product would stick to the cavity side of the mould where it refused to budge. When it was forcefully taken out from the mould, the product deformed. Another problem was, because of not being able to ‘compact’ the material further during the process of injection, the product did not form properly and when it was taken out from the mould, it looked like a deformed ‘playdoh’. To add to the list of negatives, the dimension of the product was totally out and did not conform to the required specs. I can sense my bad week had just started. Oh had I mentioned that there were ‘flashing’ problems too? Shit.
We were so frustrated that we just ordered our technician to stop injecting after 30mins as we could not get the desired results. A meeting was called for and all the sweaty guys (including me) were crammed into a small room with all our engineering data on hand to thrash everything out. The meeting lasted for 2 hours where all the ‘old hands’ in mould fabrication exchanged ideas on how to improve the mould design so as to eliminate the problems. I sat trying my best to absorb from the ‘old hands’ their knowledge and experiences on solving issues such as these and I was totally in awe. I kept thinking despite all the engineering knowledge that a person can have, nothing can beat experience and these guys do not possess the so called ‘certificates’. I mean, they were solving issues as if they were not issues at all and mind you, they were scribbling the engineering solutions in Chinese! I had nothing but true respect to them for their professionalism.
Anyway, as for the project, the mould changes had been given a green light and modifications had been carried out. As for my supervisor, he had to stay back in KL to carry out further tests while I started my journey back to JB at around 6pm. It is again scheduled that we have to go back to KL this Thursday to do the final phase of testing before shipping the mould back to JB. Man…I am goddamn tired.
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