Rotational moulding consultancy services
In addition to manufacturing products on behalf of clients and our own product lines, at Corilla Plastics we offer a comprehensive range of rotational moulding consultancy services to help you with your own projects.
Our consultancy services break down into three areas; design, technical and manufacturing, but in reality it is our expertise across all three disciplines which allows us to add value to projects.
Design consultancy for rotational moulding
With regard to rotational moulding design, perhaps the most fundamental question we ask is whether rotomoulding is appropriate. For a lot of products, rotational moulding offers considerable benefits over other manufacturing processes. It is particularly suited to large, hollow shapes and lower volume production runs. The set up costs are comparatively low and products are moulded without pressure being applied making it an excellent choice for many applications.
But it is not the right process for every project and our design consultancy services will help determine if it is right for yours.
Involving Corilla at the design stage can also help to cut costs by engineering ‘out’ unnecessary components or functionality. For example – we assisted with the re-design of a fuel tank which originally had a filler neck and moulded tube as part of the finished product. Our input at the design stage meant we were able to suggest removing the filler neck and tube and replace them with off the shelf components. This greatly reduced the cost of the mould and the production time, offering significant savings.
Technical consultancy for rotational moulding
To some extent, design decisions will be heavily influenced by our technical and manufacturing expertise and vice-versa. However as a standalone function, our technical consultants will look at material choice, thickness, stiffness and flexibility of the finished article and advise on how best to achieve the desired output.
For example, we manufactured a material handling ‘caddy’ that was used to move vehicle engines around a factory to various assembly stations. The load bearing points on the block meant that we needed to strengthen several specific corners for the caddy to handle the weight of the engine block. By specifying key criteria for the mould, the wall thickness of the finished product could be varied to ensure the finished article was fit for purpose.
Our technical consultancy is also able to advise on how products can be manufactured to perform better. Clients will often specify that a product must have a usable life of x years, from which they can derive a price to sell the end product. Thanks to the relative ease with which we can accommodate the finished wall thickness of a product, we frequently find that a product can be engineered to last considerably longer than anticipated, giving a higher resale value for a relatively low increase in production costs.
Roto moulding manufacturing consultants
The culmination of being involved in the design and technical specification stages for a product should mean that come the production phase, all goes well and for our customers who involve us at the earlier stages this is the case.
However, we are often asked for advice on how to improve a product that is already being manufactured elsewhere. The nature of rotationally moulded plastic products means that a large number of variables are in play at any given time and experience is the best way to overcome any issues that arise. For example, is the product being over or undercooked, cooled too quickly, or does the mould have a design flaw which is stopping heat from reaching all sections of the mould at the correct temperature.
We are always happy to look at existing mouldings with a view to improving your production techniques.