The PET club
This blog belongs to the PET club. Follow our journey and share our experiences as we aim for the K-2016 Fair in Düsseldorf!
“Future or reality?” Or “Welcome to Dusseldorf”
Thursday morning, 7.00, airport. I was waiting for the plane with a total confidence that I have a plan. Or, well, something like a plan. And few hours later we were standing near the entrance to the fair – my confidence was crushed, although there was a little hope that I still do have a plan. But then we went inside… … And at some point I found myself walking…
Vitamin K – Behind the Scenes of Mass Manufacturing
As a novice at K-Fair pepper to have your sense of scale recalibrated. The massive machines that were somehow transported to and assembled at K-Fair did not sit there idly. Many production lines were fully operational and put on free sample duty. There were metric tons of free samples to be had, still warm, straight from the production cells. A few highly desirable samples had queues with waiting times of…
The Huge K-Fair
The Huge K-Fair It is clear that K-Fair is huge, unfathomably huge, but what really interested me was the potential for industry revolutionizing technology and educating production and material solutions. I’m going to specify about two cases that maybe explain what I mean. High Pressure Reaction Injection Molding Industry revolutionizing technology – the first company at the fair that I properly sat down and talked to makes machines/machine lines for…
K- fair ”Broaden Your Horizons”
There are many ways to find information about a product, but a trade fair will allow you to easily and effectively experience product features and product manufacture. It is only at a trade fair where you can explore the product yourself, ask questions, test and compare its characteristics. Trade fairs are the quickest and most effective way to keep up-to-date with latest innovations. We visited K fair in Düsseldorf for…
Extrude and Mill; could this be the future of short run manufacturing?
Of the countless stands at the K-Fair Dusseldorf few relied on additive manufacturing as the speed is not competitive with conventional mass production. However; one stand stood out from the others as they combined additive manufacturing (3D printing) and conventional subtractive manufacturing (milling) in the one cell. The team behind this development is from the Institut für Kunststoffverarbeitung Aachen. The key to this production relies on a hybrid robotic arm…
Business in the front, party in the back: Once upon a time in K-fair
Smart suits and business cards all around. Sports bag, hiking boots and cranky mood. I’ll fit in well. Grey clouds covering the sky once I step onto the surroundings of K-fair set a perfect mood. Long and tiring day. Laying down on stairs feels great. Classy, I know. Our slightly nerdy group of engineers finally gathered together and thus our lovely stay in Düsseldorf had started. K-fair is the largest…
The fourth industrial revolution is on our hands!
A K-fair summary from the two guys who just showed up. So the story here was PET club has a tradition of going to the K-fair the largest trade fair for all plastics-and polymer industry. How does two energy- and environmental engineering students find themselves on a trip to Germany? Well in our case you help out at a kid’s science fair and carry a few chairs, apparently you sometimes…
Injection molding
For my first day at the k-fair I have located that the injection molding machines are mainly in halls 13 and 15 ad walked around trying to see them all and learn as much as possible. It seems like some injection molding manufacturers are specialized into doing machines for a specific application or with a specific approach on things, like bottle pre-form manufacturing or developing a really advanced robot for…
PET, set, go!
Greetings Arcada! This is Paul Nix reporting live from our encampment at the K-Fair in Düsseldorf Germany! The PET club has arrived and we have infiltrated the event! Not only that we have linked up all 14 participants, we have made our way to the hostel to regroup for our next assault in the morning! Once we had all come together outside the Eastern entrance, I heard our chairman Antonia…
Cor Cups
During the past few days we have been busy in the Arcada plastics lab. We got a big batch of color samples appropriate to mixing with ABS and we have been making Cor Cups. For each color startring with white we have been doing a weak mixture, 2% color by weight, and a strong mixture, 4% color by weight. Batches have been 500g of ABS so we end up with approximately…