Custom Moulding

 Kiel Services on Offer.

Advice: Perhaps you are not sure if rotational moulding is the right process for your product. Call one of our friendly sales team for an obligation free advisory service.

Product Design: Kiel Industries has a design team to help you through all stages of design from concept through to finished product.

Product Moulds: Kiel Industries have their own engineering workshops to manufacture moulds for clients to suit Kiel’s unique moulding equipment.

Machinery: Kiel Industries moulding machines have been designed to suit Australian production requirements, Italian designed, Canadian built, Kiel Industries are the only company in Australia with this world class revolutionary equipment. This equipment uniquely offers economical prices for short run production needed today.

Production: Everyone wishes that their product is successful and production volumes will be high. The facts are that Australia is still a small country compared to the rest of the world and we are still to some extent isolated. No one carries stock any more and rely on the ‘just in time’ principals. Finances and budgets do not allow for large stock holding and so weekly or monthly usage is carefully monitored. At Kiel Industries our strengths are catering for those low volume, ‘just in time’ principals.  The versatility of our machinery also enables us to offer competitive pricing for the high volume rapid production requirements as well.

The Rotational Moulding Process.

Rotational Moulding makes it possible to manufacture, economically, a timeless range of sophisticated parts and products in a variety of plastics, in all complex shapes and sizes, some of which would be impossible to produce by any other moulding process.

Designers and engineers have been quick to realise its potential, particularly for applications requiring hollow parts or complex shapes. Major advances in plastics technology, and in mould construction, make the new process even more versatile and valuable, opening up new horizons.

A big factor in the growth of rotational moulding is its adaptability for short run or long- scale production.

Such is the scope of the process that it can mould products as small as a ping-pong ball weighing just a few grams, or as large as a 28,000 litre tank weighing almost 700 kilograms.

The process can be adapted to the customers need – and the designers imagination.

The potential for rotational moulding is vast. It has the versatility to create the new shapes into the future.

The Process.

The principal of rotational moulding of plastics is simple. Basically the process consists of introducing a know amount of plastic in powder, granular, or viscous liquid form into a hollow, shell-like mould. The mould is rotate and/or rocked about two principal axes at relatively low speeds as it is heated so that the plastic enclosed in the mould adheres to, and forms a monolithic layer against, the mould surface. The mould rotation continues during the cooling phase so that the plastic retains its desired shape as it solidifies. When the plastic is sufficiently rigid, the cooling and mould rotation is stoped to allow the removal of the plastic product from the mould. At this stage, the cyclic process may be repeated. The basic steps of mould changing, mould heating, mould cooling, and part ejection are shown bellow.

Advantages and Disadvantages.

The main attraction of rotational moulding are:

            A hollow part can be made in one piece with no weld lines or joints.

            The end product is essentially stress free.

            The moulds are relatively inexpensive.

            The lead time for manufacture of a mould is relatively short.

            Short production runs can be economically viable.

            There is no material wastage in that the full charge of material is normally consumed in making

the part.

            It is possible to make multi layer products.

            Different types of product can be moulded on the one machine.

            Inserts are relatively easy to mould in.

            High quality graphics can be moulded in.

The main disadvantages of rotational moulding are:

            The manufacturing times are long.

            The choice of moulding material is limited.

            The material costs are relatively high due to the need of special additive packages and the fact

that the material must be ground to a fine powder.

            Some geometrical features (such as ribs) are difficult to mould.