Strengths

1. "Extreme Shapes"

The thermoforming of "Extreme Shapes" in plastics is our company specialty. An "Extreme Shape" is when the male section of the plastic part is made with vertical wall sections instead of tapered wall sections. All the thermoforming text books will tell you to taper the wall sections of the mold so that the plastic part will release from the mold after being formed. This is true but sometimes the vertical wall shape of the plastic part is more important than the easy release of the part from the mold.

Plastic parts with "Extreme Shapes" are very difficult to separate from the mold. It took years to learn to perfect the thermoforming of "Extreme Shapes" in plastic parts. Many parts and molds were destroyed in the learning process.

The molds and plug assists that are used to make plastic parts with "Extreme Shapes" are more expensive. The cycle time to form plastic parts with "Extreme Shapes" is about the same as regular shapes.

2. Low Cost Plastic Parts

-a. Low Cost Molds

The thermoforming of plastic parts begins with the designing and building of the mold. The mold designing is done in consultation with the customer. Once the design is finalized, the mold can be built. Machining can be kept to a minimum by casting geometric shapes and duplicating. These molds have a long life. If required, future mold modifications can easily be made because of the ease of adding to an epoxy mold.

-b. High Speed Ovens

High speed, contact ovens will deliver more parts per hour and therefore better prices to our customers.

Thermoformers

- 16" X 25" custom built thermoformer

- 48" X 48" custom built thermoformer

Both thermoformers have bottom and top mold platforms with vacuum and pressure capability. The high speed, contact ovens can heat a 1/16" sheet of ABS to forming temperature in 17 seconds. The two stage vacuum system yields maximum forming pressure. Both thermoformers can handle sheet thickness from 1/16" to 1/2".

-c. Low Overhead of the Newfoundland Plant

The Puffin Plastics plant is located in Stephenville, Newfoundland, Canada. Newfoundland is Canadas most economically depressed Province, yet the workers are highly educated and skilled. The low overhead in Newfoundland means that we can pass on these savings to our customers with lower mold and part prices.

3. High Quality Parts

-a. High Quality Molds

All of our molds are made from a special epoxy resin that has excellent temperature control characteristics. Every mold is designed for good plastic flow to maintain uniform plastic thickness. Plug assists (top molds) are used when the plastic must be evenly stretched into a hole or to control webbing. Puffin Plastics uses the latest plug assist technology.

All plastic parts are guarantied to have no stress cracks or lumps. Stress cracks can happen, over a period of time, if there is uneven cooling of the plastic during forming. Lumps happen if the plastic is chilled by a poor quality mold before the plastic has had time to stretch and be evenly formed.

Generally, the mold quality is responsible for the quality of the part. Fan cooling is a secondary factor in part quality.

-Uniform Heating of the Sheet

Our contact ovens transfer heat evenly into the sheet by means of conduction, not radiation. Conduction is much more uniform that radiation.

Limitations

1. Our thermoformer machines have fixed sizes due to the contact ovens and plastic clamps. We can do fractional sizes (1/2, 1/3 etc. of the thermoformer size by using 2 or 3 molds). Duplicating molds costs more but it allows us to make the parts faster.

2. We do not do twin sheet thermoforming.

3. We have formed with ABS, polystyrene, acrylic, and Kydex. We are anxious to try other plastic materials.

4. Minimum sheet thickness we will form is 1/16".