Matrix Tool was honored at the 2021 Plastics Technology’s Hot Shots awards ceremony held at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois, on Sept. 22, 2021. The peer-reviewed parts contest was broken down into two main categories: technical sophistication and high efficiencies/economics.
“We were pleasantly surprised that our lone entry won both award categories,” said Matrix Tool General Manager Dave Moyak. “By partnering with our injection molding machine supplier Sodick Plustech, we are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in both micro molding and micro featured parts,” he added.
Matrix Tool’s proprietary Hot Shots entry was a custom-built 4-cavity mold designed to showcase extreme high precision in both steel and plastic. The part weighs 0.106 grams, or a mere five pellets of resin, and is molded out of an engineering-grade liquid crystal polymer (LCP), SumikaSuper E6807T. The part is designed with over 60 knife-edge tooling features and each intricate through feature is formed by mating cores from both mold halves. Numerous features on the part are as thin as .0048″, or slightly thicker than a human hair.
The tool has both front and back half ejection, utilizes multi-directional alignment interlocks and linear ball bearing guided ejection. This ensures that both halves of the tool meet with extreme alignment shot after shot. Matrix Tool was able to eliminate traditional leader pin use — resulting in more efficient and balanced cooling and a much smaller overall footprint. The net result is a tool that can fit in the palm of the hand, measuring only 4.5″ X 5.0″ X 5.9″.
The high-efficiency gains were made possible by running the tool in one of Sodick Plustech’s 20-ton, two-stage, Hi-Response micro injection molding machines. The 4-cavity tool filled in 0.16 seconds and can out-produce a higher cavitation tool running in a conventional injection molding machine. The tool was on display and running at the Sodick Plustech exhibit during the three-day 2021 Molding conference.
