ã€Packaging Network News】 Hamilton, Ohio -- Confidentiality Up to four years later, the US consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble unveiled the veil of the Imflux process. This is a new injection molding technology that uses a lower steady pressure to inject molds. Both the mold and the nozzle are controlled by software and pressure sensors.
Procter & Gamble's market value is as high as $65 billion. It owns a series of global brands such as Gillette, Head & Shoulders, Jiajishi, Tide and Yiyi. In 2013, P&G established a new division of 150 employees called Imflux. It is responsible for the development of new injection molding technology and is now open to the industry. Since Procter & Gamble’s senior management team has been very tight-lipped since the company formed the department in 2013, it has started to describe the details of the technology in its industry activities.
Plastics News reporter visited P&G on September 21st in the 200,000-square-foot headquarters in Hamilton, north of Cincinnati. The company visited the Imflux department with reporters. The employees designed and produced molds for Imflux and further refined the injection molding technology together with consumers.
Imflux executives said that in a sense, the technology completely subverted the traditional injection molding process. Gene Altonen, chief technology officer of Imflux, emphasized: "We use low voltage and are operating at constant voltage." Jayne has been working for P&G for 27 years and is an injection molding expert. He said: "Imflux can really achieve real-time adjustment of viscosity changes. When changes occur in materials, temperatures or molds, real-time adjustments make the entire injection molding process more stable."
Imflux is a standard injection molding technology that enables traditional high-speed, high-pressure injection molding, as well as packaging and cooling processes. Jayne said: "These processes can be done simultaneously, because we are also packaging and cooling simultaneously when filling plastic materials, so when the injection molding is completed, it is basically a finished product. Some thicker molds may require further cooling but cooling. The time is also greatly reduced. We no longer add stress and heat to the mold."
Compared with the traditional injection molding technology, Imflux can reduce the cost of the mold, shorten the entire injection cycle time, allowing the use of smaller injection molding machines, thereby reducing hardware investment costs.
The company claims that the technology relies mainly on special software and different types of sensors in injection molding machines and molds. Imflux technology comes from the internal goal set by P&G sixty-seven years ago to reduce the cost and time to produce molds by half.
Twenty plastic-product-related leaders from various Procter & Gamble departments formed a team called "Upgrading Corporate Development Project Team." Jayne recalled the scene at that time: "Our approach is to determine what factors determine the cost and time of these molds. Most of the factors are attributed to high pressure. Therefore, hard steel tools must be used, and multi-step processing must be used. Processes, roughing, semi-processing, and finally processing into finished products. All this takes time. If we can get all these steps in one go, then we think of low-voltage technology."
The company expects this injection molding innovation will save P&G hundreds of millions of dollars in material costs and capital costs each year because it can reduce the cost spent on molds, and allow the use of smaller tonnage injection molding machines to process molds, reporting that it can save up to 10 Billion dollar cost.
Chief executive Nathan Estruth said that Imflux did not enter the quarterly report of P&G's financial analysts, but senior executives have disclosed some details of the cost reduction at the analyst meeting. He said: "From P&G's core interests, it is very beneficial to reduce costs."
Imflux claimed that the technology was authorized by the injection molding machine and the company refused to disclose the licensing fee, which was recommended based on the needs of users. In addition to the internal cost savings, the licensing of external licenses can also bring unbeatable gains to Procter & Gamble.
Imflux did not disclose data on technology transfer, including licenses and the number of injection molding machines used internally by Procter & Gamble, and the number of companies that have used Imflux technology.
Procter & Gamble is already working with a number of plastics machinery companies, such as the company’s presentation on the public day of KraussMaffei in Florence, Kentucky on October 5th.