Plastics Institute of America Plastics Engineering, Manufacturing & Data Handbook: Volume 1 Fundamentals and Processes

This comprehensive handbook provides a simplified, practical and innovative approach to understanding the design and manufacture of plastic products. Plastics behaviour is presented to enhance the capability of fabricating products that meet performance standards, low cost requirements and profitability targets. To maximize product performance-to-cost efficiency, it is important to know the behaviour of plastics. Therefore, the behaviours of different plastic products are reviewed. Examples include toys, medical devices, cars, boats, underwater devices, containers, springs, pipes, buildings and aircraft. Also covered are behaviours associated with different plastic materials (thermoplastics, elastomers, reinforced plastics) and the many fabricating processes (extrusion, injection moulding, blow moulding, forming, foaming, reaction injection moulding, rotational moulding). This material is presented so that both technical and non-technical readers can understand the inter-relationships of materials-to-processes. The authors examine different plastic products and their related critical factors, from meeting performance requirements in different environments, to reducing costs, and targeting for zero defects. Examples used include small to large, and simple to complex shapes. Information is included on static properties (tensile, flexural), dynamic properties (creep, fatigue, impact,) physical and chemical properties. Over 20,000 subjects are reviewed with 1060 figures and 415 tables.