Brampton, Ontario, Canada: StackTeck Systems Ltd., a global manufacturer of multi-cavity, high-volume production molds for packaging, closures, personal care and medical products, will display their newly developed KoolTrack™ technology in their booth W-1375 at the NPE show in Orlando.
According to Jordan Robertson, StackTeck’s General Manager of Business Development and Marketing, “KoolTrack is the culmination of multiple developments, combining our ability to simulate heat transfer in the part and molding surface components with a new proprietary bonding technology. Using the latest available heat transfer simulation software enables us to establish the optimal 3D cooling channel geometry for any plastic part. Introducing the bonding process in the manufacture of molding surface components allows for intricate cooling channels to be cut in steel parts that are then bonded together to make cores and cavities that have ideal cooling circuits inside.”
StackTeck will show a static display of a stack component for cutlery, with a section cut away to expose the internal complexity of the component.
“We’ve been using different approaches to conformal cooling of simpler parts for several years…” said Vince Travaglini, StackTeck’s Vice President of Engineering, “…and we typically find cycle time savings in the range of 10- 15% for sub-10 second cycle times. As cooling simulation techniques become more effective, we can generate optimal cooling channel geometry at the design stage of the project for increasingly complex plastic parts. Conventional designs used drilled lines or multiple parts that would fit together with o-rings to seal the cooling channels, then we started bonding parts together using a variety of processes. Today, based on experience with over 100 molds we have fine-tuned our approach, and we can rely on an established proprietary bonding process that is as strong as the steel material itself. In the end, it’s as if we removed the constraints of conventional machining and added artistic freedom to apply cooling wherever it’s needed inside a single block of steel”.
StackTeck not only designs and builds the molds, but has extensive capabilities such as in-house mold qualification, process validation and full system integration (robotics and automation), with the ability to perform system evaluations in house using state-of-the-art injection molding machines. The company also offers in-house training of its customers in the set-up, operation and maintenance of these high-tech molding systems.
