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 over half an hour, notably an injection molded, robotically assembled, folding step-stool. If plastic boxes and buckets large enough to live in are more your thing there were pallets worth of those too.

While massive injection molding machines and blown film lines larger than the average Finnish apartment building, running indoors, are beyond impressive, and the urge to walk in to booths large enough to host these machines equally huge; there might be more to be gained from smaller stands and smaller sentences. Taking the time to filter through the numerous smaller booths rewards you with a higher ratio of experts to visitors which allows for a much higher chance of starting up a conversation tailored to your interests.

One of the most interesting was also one of the smallest; some sort of infrared in-line CT measurement. A “real-time” cross section (internal features included) of the extrude is is measured using IR and in certain multi-layered extrudes individual layers can be measured and identified. It wasn’t just a proof of concept but a complete solution for in-line quality control, with machine vision and all.

PET score: 10/10

Random vids from the trip: