Clariant, a world leader in specialty chemicals, announces availability of new blow-molding tools that can help customers evaluate how Clariant color and additive masterbatches perform in real-world applications. The tooling is available for use on full-size production blow-molding machines located in the Company’s West Chicago, IL, technical center.
The new single-cavity tool, which is intended for reheat stretch blow molding of clear or colored PET polyester resins, produces a 12-oz (355-ml) round bottle with a long neck and curved sides. The design is intended to reflect current design trends for liquor bottles, but can also be used to evaluate wine, soft-drinks and other food and beverage containers too.
“This new mold includes the details that customers told us they wanted in prototype tooling,” explains Peter Prusak, Head of Marketing, Clariant Masterbatches North America. “The tooling we’ve had in the past produced flask-shaped bottles and the broad, flat panels where not as representative of the shapes that producers of liquor bottles and other beverage containers are looking for today.”
The tooling can be used to evaluate not only color, but also performance-enhancing additives and barrier properties as well. Prusak says that the way plastic materials stretch to create a bottle’s shape can vary depending on the color and other ingredients in the compound. A resin/masterbatch combination that works well in one shape can develop cosmetic flaws or unacceptable physical properties in another. This is why it is so important to produce shapes that more accurately mimic the actual end-product containers.
