In-Mold Labeling for Cups Injection Mold Production Issues

    

In-Mold Labeling for Cups Injection Mold Production issues 

In the injection mold to achieve the IML, In-Mold Labeling for Cups process, there are several of technical difficulties and pain points, which are mainly related to injection mold design, labeling materials, process control, production efficiency and other aspects. Today Zhuhai Hongfei Mold Co. will give you an analysis about the injection mold :

 1. Complex mold structure and high cost

Zhuhai Hongfei Mould can give you a solution to the pain point problem of the mold. Injection molds need to combine label fixing, injection molding, ejection production process and many other aspects, the design is difficult.

Especially in multi-cavity molds, it is difficult to place the labels in each cavity synchronously, which affects the consistency.

Compared with the traditional injection mold only need to consider the plastic flow, production is not trapped air, no batch front, the total amount of products to meet customer requirements on the good. And IML molds also need to consider the fixation and exhaust of the label, for many injection molding factories, how to combine the injection molds and color labels synchronous production, to avoid improper design of the parting surface will lead to labeling pressure injuries or flying edges and other issues.

Suggested solutions

(1.) Modular mold design: easy to replace the positioning mechanism and reduce maintenance cost.

(2.) Optimize the exhaust system: increase the exhaust tank or vacuum adsorption to avoid label burning due to trapped air.

(3.) Sensitive process parameters, debugging difficulties, professional tuning master is also very important

 

2. Difficulty in mold maintenance

Our company is targeting molds that are found to be contaminated by label residue or ink buildup during production and require frequent cleaning.

When the in-film labeling mold is used for a long period of time, the positioning mechanism (e.g. vacuum holes) may be clogged.

This is because labels may partially melt at high temperatures and adhere to the surface of the mold cavity. Ink volatiles may be deposited inside the mold.

To this, Zhuhai Hongfei Mould suggests the following solutions

(1.) The tuning master should learn to clean the mold: e.g. nano-coating (PTFE) to reduce the sticking mold.

(2.) Automated cleaning system: e.g. high pressure air blowing or laser cleaning of mold cavities.

 

In addition to the above issues, the film inside the sticker mold is also related to the label positioning and fixing problems, labeling materials, process debugging, low production efficiency and so on. We can optimize the mold design, material selection and process control, the pain points of the film inside the cup injection mold can be effectively solved to further improve production efficiency and product yield.