Therma-flo™
What is Therma-flo™?
Therma-flo™ is a molding and polymer analysis method and software that measures and displays the material properties of a plastic melt in actual molding conditions.
This molding and polymer analysis software uses a patented and proprietary method for mapping the actual injection molding characteristics of a polymer melt while flowing through a mold. Using the latest Therma-flo 2.1 software, you can view polymer behavior in easy to understand graphical outputs.
This polymer analysis is conducted using real injection molding conditions over a range of temperatures, cavity wall thicknesses, and melt flow front velocities in a cavity.
Why Should You Use Therma-flo?
Therma-flo makes it easy to analyze and compare the molding characteristics of polymer melts.
Using this software you can:
- Compare and quantify the difference between competing materials
- Quickly evaluate the impact of wall thickness on fill pressure
- Evaluate a material’s flow sensitivity to temperature
- Contrast molding viscosity to imported traditional viscosity vs. shear rate data
- Relate the material characteristics to an actual mold and molding machine, easing the translation to and from your shop floor
How Does Therma-flo Capture Data?
Therma-flo is part of a fully integrated test cell that includes our proprietary tooling, a high-performance injection molding machine with specially developed controls, and a high speed data-collection system.
Our patented method evaluates a polymer’s flow behavior through a wide range of cavity geometries. The plastic melt is characterized through multiple molding channels at up to 10 injection rates and multiple melt temperatures. Flow velocity and melt pressures are captured directly through our highly instrumented tooling.
Specialized cartridges allow characterization of thin-wall and micro-molding, high-flow materials such as LCPs, and we also offer a dedicated automotive analysis.
Who Benefits from Therma-Flo?
Product Developers and Designers
- Material selection: easily and accurately evaluate how a new material will perform in your mold
- New product development: quickly determine how your given material will perform in a new mold
- Material comparison: compare competing materials’ molding properties for better informed material selection
Plastic Material Suppliers
- Significantly improve your ability to guide customers to the appropriate material for their application based on real molding data
- Increase customer satisfaction and reduce complaints by better understanding how your materials perform under real shop floor conditions
Polymer Developers
- Accelerate material development timelines and reduce costs by efficiently mapping how a new material or compound will perform under molding conditions
Injection Molders
- Increase efficiency on the shop floor by receiving unique pre-molding process evaluation, troubleshooting capabilities, and a means to easily evaluate molding alternatives and substitute polymers
How Does the Software Work?
The Therma-flo polymer molding analysis software provides a user friendly interface that allows the user to graphically display molding characteristics of a single material, or simultaneously contrast multiple materials under your specified conditions
The easy to interpret graphical data allows you to evaluate the influence of melt temperature, injection rate, and wall thickness on fill pressure for your material or materials.
