Blow Moulding

Basically, blow molding in intended for use in manufacturing hollow plastic products, such as bottles
and other containers. However, the process is also used for the production of toys, automobile
parts, accessories, and many engineering components. The principles used in blow molding are
essentially similar to those used in the production of glass bottles. Although there are considerable
differences in the process available for blow molding, the basic steps are the same:

(1) melt the plastic;

(2) form the molten plastic into a parison (a tubelike shape of molten plastic);

(3) seal the ends of the parison except for one area through which the blowing air can enter;

(4) inflate the parison to assume the shape of the mold in which it is placed;

(5) cool the blow molded part;

(6) eject the blow-molded part;

(7) trim flash if necessary.

Two basic processes of blow molding are :

 extrusion blow molding and

 injection blow molding.

These processes differ in the way in which the parison is made. The extrusion process utilizes an
unsupported parison, whereas the injection process utilizes a parison supported on a metal core.
The extrusion blow-molding process by far accounts for the largest percentage of blow molded
objects produced today. The injection process is, however, gaining acceptance. Although any
thermoplastic can be blow-molded, polyethylene products made by this technique are predominant.
Polyethylene squeeze bottles form a large percentage of all blowmolded products

: Extrusion-Blow moulding (EBM)- EBM machine configurations

Extrusion blow molding, or EBM, is a manufacturing process where plastic
pellets are first melted in an extruder and then expelled into a hollow tube
called a parison. The barrel of the extruder helps hold the raw materials
being manufactured, and screws help mix the material inside.

The typical resins used in the extrusion blow molding process include:

 HDPE
 LDPE
 PP
 PVC
 ePET
 PETG &
 “Soft Touch” Resins

Many bottles and jars, whether they are single layer or multi-layer, are
produced through this process. Chances are; if you’ve ever seen pasta
being made, you’ve seen an extruder working! It’s the exact same
concept.

We’ll dig a little deeper into the actual process soon, but for now, let’s
go over some important definitions that apply to the extrusion blow
molding process.
 IMPORTANT PROCESS DEFINITIONS
MOLD

A mold is an assembly that can include one or more cavities.

CAVITY

A cavity is the individual molding surface that will produce a single

blow-molded part. Cavitation is driven by the quantity of product
needed, as well as the size of the container being molded.

PARISON

Parisons are the hollow plastic “tubes” formed by extruding molten

material through a die head.

BLOW PIN

The blow pin is a tooling component that’s introduced into the mold and
molten parison in order to blow the compressed air. The blow pin tip
also helps form the neck by either the force of the compressed air or
the mere compression force of the blow pin against the material (and
the neck finish of the mold), depending upon the type of molding
machine process being used.

FLASH

A flash is the excess material that extends from the mold

EXTRUSION BLOW MOLDING WORK

In order to produce the many single or multi-layer bottles and jars you package
your products in or even use every day, the process first starts with the plastic
pellets we mentioned earlier.

The Extrusion Blow Molding Process Broken Into 5 Steps

1. The extruder turns each plastic pellet into a molten material with the help
of a heated barrel and sheer force. Both temperature (frictional and
external heat are used) and pressure melt the plastic.
2. The material is then moved through the extrusion tooling to create a
parison.
3. In order to be captured, the parison is closed into a water-cooled mold.
4. Next, compressed air is blown into the parison. This blown air inflates the
parison into the exact shape of the mold cavity, thus forming a hollow
bottle, container, or part. If you’ve ever seen glassblowing, it’s very much
like that.
5. After the plastic has cooled enough, the mold is opened and the part or
product is taken out!

EBM machines come in different configurations, each

designed for specific manufacturing needs. The three
most common EBM machine configurations are:
What is multilayer co-extrusion blow molding?

Multilayer co-extrusion blow molding is the technology of making hollow container by

blowing molding.

It uses more than two extruders to melt and plasticize the same or different plastics in
different extruders.

And then compounding, extruding and forming multi-layer concentric composite parison
in the die.

Its basic process principle is the same as the single-layer blow moulding technique. Only
the moulding equipment uses several extruders to plasticize a different kind of plastics.

Control the integration and bond quality of plastics layers is the key to the multilayer co-
extrusion blow molding technology.

Multilayer co-extrusion blow molding is developed to meet the needs in some industries
with some special requirements.

Such as the airtightness and corrosion resistance in pharmaceutical, food, and industry.

The following content will help you understand this technology better.

Multilayer Co-Extrusion Blow Molding

Characteristics

Multilayer co-extrusion blow molding hollow products are produced by extruding several
different raw materials into hollow products through multi-layer die head.

To achieve the barrier performance of the container to external substances.

Adopt coextrusion blow molding, compound a variety of polymers together. Forming the
multi-layer containers.

The advantages can be summarized as follows:

Improve the impermeability

 Improve the performance of the products. Such as strength, stiffness, softness, heat
resistance, transparency and size stability

Improve the surface performance of products. No stripe, no speckle, no scratch. More

smooth, cleaner.

Multilayer Co-Extrusion Blow Molding Material

Selection

The development of multilayer co-extrusion blow molding technology and equipment

makes it possible to choose the best material combination plan.

And this also realizes the production of ideal performance blow molding products.

According to the production capacity range and performance requirements, this technique
supports 3-6 layers of production.

When choosing material, the different layers should choose different materials.

The inner layer and outer layer, choose all-new material, which is of high quality.

Attention here, you should according to your production needs to choose suitable raw
material.

Because we’re a water tank blow molding machine manufacture, we usually produce a
water tank by our machine to test it. For the water tank, HDPE is a good choice. We also
use it. Most of our customers also choose HDPE. Its performance makes the blow molding
products more durable.

And the intermediate layer, you can use waste material.

Multilayer Co-Extrusion Blow Molding

Advantage
1. It provides higher quality blow moulding products under the more broad width and linear
velocity.
2. Fill low-cost material. It can save high-quality resin. Recycling use of raw materials. Save
the material cost.
3. Improve production efficiency.
4. The products under this technology are durable, more stable, the quality is higher.
5. Multilayer co-extrusion blow molding products usually have high chemical resistance
(oxidation resistance, light aging resistance), harmful substance penetration resistance,
odor migration resistance, compression resistance, impact resistance, smooth surface,
heat resistance, and surface scratch prevention.

Multilayer Co-Extrusion Blow Molding

Application
Food and Beverage

Packaging of tomato sauce, rapeseed oil, jam and milk, orange juice, carbonated
beverage, beer, etc.

Multilayer co-extruded bottle products have three layers, five layers, and six layers. There
are more plastic bottles with six layers of general materials.

Chemical Reagents

This kind of products usually consists of three-layer combination, four-layer combination,

five-layer combination, the six-layer combination of 5-10L barrels, plastic bottles below 1L,
etc.

Industrial Buckets:

Industrial containers for storing and loading various liquids.

In addition to common water tanks, there are IBC buckets, double-ring buckets, and so
on.

Industrial containers usually need to have certain impact resistance, and the
characteristics of multi-layer co-extrusion blow molding technology determine that multi-
layer blow molding products have a certain impact resistance.

Others:

Packaging in medicine and cosmetics

Injection blow molding

Overview
Injection blow moulding is used for the Production of hollow objects in large quantities. The main
applications are bottles, jars and other containers. The Injection blow moulding process produces
bottles of superior visual and dimensional quality compared to extrusion blow moulding. The
process is ideal for both narrow and wide-mouthed containers and produces them fully finished
with no flash.

Type of material used

Polyethylene (Low Density) LDPE, LLDPE

Polypropylene PP

Polyethylene - Terephthalate PET

Polyvinyl chloride PVC

Polyethylene (High Density) HDPE

The Process
The process is divided in to three areas:

Injection
The injection blow moulding machine is based on an extruder barrel and screw
assembly which melts the polymer. The molten polymer is fed into a manifold
where it is injected through nozzles into a hollow, heated preform mould. The
preform mould forms the external shape and is clamped around a mandrel (the
core rod) which forms the internal shape of the preform. The preform consists
of a fully formed bottle/jar neck with a thick tube of polymer attached, which
will form the body.

Blowing
The preform mould opens and the core rod is rotated and clamped into the
hollow, chilled blow mould. The core rod opens and allows compressed air
into the preform, which inflates it to the finished article shape.

Ejection
After a cooling period the blow mould opens and the core rod is rotated to the
ejection position. The finished article is stripped off the core rod and leak-
tested prior to packing. The preform and blow mould can have many cavities,
typically three to sixteen depending on the article size and the required output.
There are three sets of core rods, which allow concurrent preform injection,
blow moulding and ejection.

injection stretch blow moulding (ISBM)

Our injection stretch blow moulding (ISBM) technology is
well suited to customers seeking lightweight, thin-walled
custom moulded bottles and containers. ISBM is primarily
used to manufacture products where the uniform shape or
wall thickness is particularly important.

It combines the benefits of two proven technologies –

injection moulding and blow moulding:
The injection moulding stage (or preform) precisely defines
the neck finish and the weight of the final bottle or jar,
significantly enhancing the rigidity of the neck and
associated cap performance. This is complemented by the
wide range of pack shapes that are achievable via the blow
moulding stage.
 The process has two variants: single-stage and two-stage.
In both variants, the plastic is first injection moulded into a
preform, defining the neck finish of the final bottle. These
preforms are heated over their glass transition
temperature, then blown using high-pressure air into
bottles using special blow moulds. At the same time, the
preform is stretched with a core rod to increase its rigidity.

ISBM process variations- two stage ISBM, single stage ISBM,

One and a Half Stage ISBM

WHAT IS THE SINGLE-STAGE BLOW MOLDING PROCESS?

A single-stage process gains its name from the fact that it creates preforms,
stretches, and blows them on the same machine before cooling.
Therefore, single stage PET blow molding machines can also be said to employ a
direct method.
This level of functionality can be attributed to the injection molding system and
blow molding station being built into one machine.
Likewise, the machine can either be a 3-station or 4-station system.
 A 3-station single-stage machine has three stages which are injection, stretch blow,
and ejection. It also uses latent heat which saves the cost of having to reheat,
thereby reducing 25% of heat in tooling.
The 4-station, on the other hand, comprises of these three stages and an additional
reheating stage.

PROCESSES INVOLVED IN THE SINGLE-STAGE METHOD

The transformation of the raw materials into a bottle using the single-stage follows
the procedures outlined below:

1. Dehumidifying and drying of PET materials

2. Melting and injecting of the raw materials into the preform mold through the
injection nozzle
3. Cooling of the molten material in the preform mold to 120 ° Celsius
4. Transfer of the hot preform mold to a bottle mold to begin the stretch molding

ADVANTAGES OF SINGLE-STAGE BLOW MOLDING PROCESS

There are several advantages of a single-stage molding process and they include:
 Compact and flexible
 Transfer ring is optional
 Creates blemish-free bottles
 More suitable for low volumes
 Control over preform production
 Control over thread start to align with bottle’s shape
 Less expensive in comparison to two-stage machines
 Suitable for blowing rectangular and non-circular shapes

DISADVANTAGES OF SINGLE-STAGE BLOW MOLDING

PROCESS
The disadvantages of employing this method include:
 Long cycle times
 Long changeover times
 Restriction in the bottle design
 Wall distribution may be uneven
 Great expertise is required in mastering both processes and PET drying
 Inefficient blow station due to injection station having more precedent over cycle
time
Let’s take a look at some of these scenarios:
 WHAT IS A TWO-STAGE BLOW MOLDING PROCESS?
The technique used in two-stage injection stretch blow molding machines involves
two machines. These are the injection molding system and stretch blow molding
machine.
Here, the plastic is molded into a fully-cooled preform in the first machine before
being shipped to the second machine.
The preform will usually feature the neck of the bottle as well as its thread, and it
can be sold to a third party even before it is blown using the second machine.
When received by the latter, they are then unscrambled, reheated using infrared
radiation, and conditioned before molding.
The need to cool the preform before reheating and stretching also gives this
process its name, the “cool preform method“.

PROCESSES INVOLVED IN THE TWO-STAGE METHOD

 Dehumidifying and drying of PET materials
 Injecting of molten raw materials into the preform mold by the injection machine
 Cooling of molten PET to room temperature
 Processing of preform by a finishing machine
 Transferring of the preform to reheating stretch blow molding machines
 Blowing high-pressure air into bottles with the use of metal blow molds

ADVANTAGES OF TWO-STAGE BLOW MOLDING PROCESS

Some advantages of the two-stage molding process include:
 Flexibility
 Fast cycle times
 Fast changeovers
 Less restriction to bottle design
 The process can be stopped at anytime
 Good wall distribution for round bottles
 Preforms can be sold before being blown
 Handles high volumes of 1000 to 72,000 bottles/hr

DISADVANTAGES TWO-STAGE BLOWING MOLDING

PROCESS
The disadvantages of this process include:
 High capital to maintain
 Floor space required is high
 Scratches may occur on bottles
 Potential damage to the preforms
Heat Set PET 101
PET is a semi-crystalline thermoplastic, which softens at approx. 76°C (what is
called “Glass Transition”). Above this temperature, the material becomes elastic,
and can be formed, a property utilized effectively in the Stretch Blow Molding
process.

Due to its glass transition at approx. 76°C, PET is initially unsuitable as a bottle
material for a hot-filling process above this temperature, since deformations may
occur: Firstly, the bottles shrink, since they “remember” their previous shape
(namely the preform), and secondly they collapse under internal pressure, a typical
phenomenon during the cool-down period after hot filling.

For this reason, the hot-fill PET bottles feature, what are called "Vacuum Panels",
which compensate for the negative pressure (vacuum) produced during the
cooldown period without the bottle collapsing. In a way, these Vacuum Panels are
used for "Designed Collapse", so that the bottle does not deform in undesired
manner.

During the "Stretching" part of the production process for PET bottles, the material
crystallizes. We talk here of Stretch-Induced Crystallization. In the standard
process (often known as "Cold Set Process"), the material is frozen in this state at
the mould wall, which is chilled. Inner stresses are then retained, and lead to
reshrinking, particularly at heat-up. If, however, the material is heated still further
after being stretched, it undergoes ‘After Crystallization’ (known as thermally
induced crystallization). The stresses in the material are then decreased, thus
reducing the tendency towards reshrinking. The increased crystallinity gives the
material significantly enhanced thermal stability. The glass transition temperature
and the rigidity increase – and we call this process “Heat-Setting”.

Producing Hot-Fill PET Bottles

This improvement in PET’s properties, thanks to "After Crystallization", is utilized
in order to produce Hot-Fill PET bottles. The performs are here, in contrast to the
standard stretch blow molding process, not blown into a cold mould, but into one
heated up to as much as 160°C.

To enable the bottles to be removed from the hot moulds however, they have to be
cooled. For this purpose, compressed air is blown through bores in the tubular-
shaped Stretching Rod, which cools the bottle from the inside known as a flushing-
air process.

The heating time for the preforms is longer, since hot-fill PET bottles are always
manufactured from heavy preforms, so as to obtain increased stability.
In the heat-set process, the bottle’s characteristics depend even more closely on the
process settings and the choice of preform than is the case in the standard process.
In particular, the temperature of the product during filling and the time during
which this temperature has to be maintained, are crucial factors. The higher the
thermal stress, the higher the degree of crystallinity required. In order to obtain a
very high degree of crystallinity, a long crystallization time in the blowing mold is
needed. Consequently, the more crystallinity is required, the lower the station’s
output will be.

PET container for Hot Filled Applications

The container's body side wall is rigidized against radical and longitudinal vacuum
distribution so that paper labels can be applied to the container. In addition, the
amorphous threaded mouth of the container is rigidized by gussets molded into the
container at the junction of the mouth and body portion of the container to resist
deformation when the container is capped. Finally, a bulbous vacuum deformation
area in the container is provided adjacent the container mouth.

, Multilayer Barrier bottles

Lamicon bottle

Oxygen degrades food and other contents. The multi-layer bottle that combines resin EVOH
to be a barrier to oxygen with resins that are mainly olefins is called a "lamicon bottle."
We use this extensively for a variety of contents as a core technology of Mebius Packaging.
Multiblock

Oxygen degrades food and other contents. This is an olefin-based, multi-layer bottle with
oxygen absorption properties developed for the purpose of protecting the contents from
oxygen.
The use of our proprietary oxygen-absorbing material in the middle layer has dramatically
increased the oxygen-barrier performance of the container. Oxygen-absorbing material is
sandwiched with EVOH to retain oxygen-absorption performance for a long time.

Barrier Technology (PET Bottles)

SiBARD

SiBARD is a double-layer, thin-film coated bottle that is coated on the inner surface of a PET
bottle with an organic silicon membrane having excellent flexibility and adhesion, and over
that a silicon oxide membrane (SiOx membrane) having an excellent gas-blocking property.
This two-layer technology is a technology unique to our Group. Furthermore, these
containers have excellent characteristics for gas-blocking properties and fragrance retention
of the bottle contents.
They are colorless, transparent and hygienically excellent containers. With the use of a
silicon-oxide film, they have the effect of blocking gases that negatively affect the quality of
foods including oxygen, water vapor and carbonated gases.
Taking advantage of these characteristics, they have been widely used for oxygen-sensitive
cooking oils, and other such food products.

Decorative Technology (Olefin Bottles)

Prime Layer

What is Prime Layer?

Prime Layer is “Plastic bottle with a distinctive appearance " made by "multi-layer extrusion
blow molding technology", this is one of the core technologies of Mobius Packaging Co.,Ltd
Value
 Four types of design with different appearance.
 We can have Glossy and Matte appearance effect on the bottle
Features
① Glossy metallic bottle
This bottle has both a glass-like luster and a metallic feel, providing luxury.
② Matte metallic bottle
This bottle has both a glass-like luster and a metallic feel, providing luxury.
③ Glossy transparent bottle
This bottle has the highest transparency among olefin bottles.
④ Matt transparent bottle
This bottle can reproduce the appearance of frosted glass, providing luxury.
Metallic bottle

This is a metallic toned plastic bottle that is molded by only a direct blow method and spray
paint is not used. Because it is highly eye-catching and has a luxurious feel, it is ideal for
differentiating in areas where the design must be special, such as f