Page 53 - Plastics News January 2026
P. 53
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
to-weight ratio and functionality properties, e.g., minimizes inventory expenditures. In addition,
electric conductivity. Polymers made out of re- 3D printing provides the ability to produce on
newable resources such as polylactic acid (PLA) demand, which allows businesses to meet the
and polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are consid- needs of the market quickly without having to
ered as a fighting force towards the environmen- carry heavy inventories.
tal problems due to the decreased use of fossil
fuels and their increased biodegradation. The Hybrid manufacturing, as an attempt to merge
creation of this type of material is a part of the the additive and traditional manufacturing pro-
general, larger movement in plastic technologies cesses, is also taking off. Such hybrid solutions
with a mix of performance and sustainability. allow manufacturers to take advantage of the
benefits of both technologies and attain a high
Advanced Processing: Precision and Efficiency level of throughput with specific customization.
An example is that part will be primarily injection-
The very process of manufacturing is being molded and made finer with additive processes
radically improved by putting into use high-tech to combine features that would otherwise have
plastic working methods. Traditional types of necessitated making expensive tool changes.
injection molding, extrusion and blow molding This symbiosis is a preview of how the future
are being supplemented by technologies that trends in the production of plastics are going to
are much more precise, consume less time and blur the line between the traditional and digital
less energy. One of them is micro-injection mold- production approaches.
ing, which enables the production of high preci-
sion parts with complicated geometry that have Automation and Robotics: Redefining the
been applied in electronics and medical devices. Shop Floor
The process will minimize the use of waste ma-
terials and contribute to the miniaturization pro- Robotics and intelligent systems have been de-
cess, one of the significant requirements of the veloped to add more to the use of automation in
company since machines and technologies are the manufacturing of plastics but they have nev-
getting smaller and smarter. er been new in the industry. Cobots or collabora-
tive robots are now working together with their
Additive manufacturing, the so-called 3D print- human workers and are serving to do repetitive
ing, is another revolution in the manufacture of and ergonomically challenging tasks. Such ro-
plastics. Although additive was originally em- bots enhance uniformity and release expert em-
ployed to make prototypes, it is currently be- ployees to concentrate on problem-solving and
ing employed to make end-use parts (especially novelty.
low-volume, high-complexity components). In
additive manufacturing, complex internal struc- Quality assurance is being turned over to au-
tures and lattice geometries are achievable, and tomated machine vision-based inspection sys-
manufacturers cannot produce such structures tems. The cameras with high resolutions and
with traditional tooling. This enhances the de- algorithms based on AI capture defects, which
sign cycle, minimizes the development time, and cannot be seen by the naked eye, making the
January 2026 PLASTICS NEWS 53
