Microcellular Injection with Gas – MuCell Technology 

One of the main themes for study and analyse, when it comes to optimisation, is the reduction of the weight of a part or assembly. The immediate and intuitive solutions are related to the modification of the geometry or material.

But what is left to be changed when there are already constraints related to the modification of the geometry or material? In their search for a solution, the engineers have thought of the aerated chocolate model.

Whereas the aerated chocolate has been introduced by Rowntree’s, in 1947, the MuCell injection moulding technology appears relatively recently, in 1974, described in an US patent, named Mixing melted plastic with gas.

Process Steps

• Raw material is melted and added into machine.
• Precise amount of gas, nitrogen or carbon-dioxide, is injected into the polymer mix.
• Homogeneous mixing to create a single-phase solution.
• Polymer is injected into the mold cavity.

 Advantages

• Reduction of the part weight up to 20%.
• Reduction of cycle time up to 10 sec.
• No significant modifications over the tooling.

Disadvantages

• Tensile strength linearly decreases with the material density.
• Unproper exterior aspect of parts.
• Additional investment cost is required.

Examples of applications

A few examples of applications include automobile instrument panels, heart pumps, storage bins, and the housing on multiple household power tools.