Who do I believe?

Ask five molders or set up techs how long and at what temperature you have to dry ABS and what it's melt temperature is supposed to be and you'll get six sets of answers.  If you didn't know the question was about ABS most people would think you're talking about different materials.

Why does this happen?  Simple – people think they know it all. The “We always did it that way” excuse.  Thirty years ago the complete palette of materials was probably about 20 common ones and a few hundred specialty engineering resins.  Today we have over 30,000 different resins with a few hundred being added every few months.  Asking the process conditions of ABS is like walking into a shoe mega-store and telling the sales person you want a pair of shoes. (‘Which of the 10,000 pairs of SHOES would you like, Sir!?!)

Unless you've got photographic memory, it is impossible to keep track of everything.  Ask any molder where the ‘tech data sheets’ are for any particular material and you'll be told they are either locked up in a filing cabinet somewhere or they don't exist.  Since the resin companies began using distributors an interesting ‘loop of ignorance’ was born.  The distributors handle such a wide line of product they usually don't have up-to-date data either.  Even if they do have the information you have to ask for it and have it faxed to you.  That isn't very practical when you are starting up a job.

Enter the Internet.  Many companies are afraid to have highly accessible Internet service because they think their employees might be sending useless e-mails, doing some e-shopping, or looking at naughty sites on company time.  No comment.  However, you can access the resin supplier's web site, go to the type of resin you are using and IMMEDIATELY download and print the optimum conditions for that material each time you run the job.  If you have problems they usually even have a section to troubleshoot defects for that particular material.

Knowledge is power.  It's this knowledge that gives you your competitive edge over the competition.  Think about it.

Contact me with questions put in the subject line QUESTIONS.
Bill Tobin, WJT Associates, E-mail: bill4012@hotmail.com