That’s actually kind of interesting, I’m wondering what kind of scale they’re doing injection molding on because most of the injection molding that I was privy to use Mexico as a springboard to go to China for China pricing, back in the late '90s.
Definitely not trying to open up any kind of bullshit topic about that, I was just around (not directly involved with) that industry when all that started happening.
I do know around the 2006/2007 time frame a lot of these smaller injection molding factories started moving into a small batch, fast turnover model for smaller orders.
I never really did find out how that worked out, but with a local Plastics injection molder, I would imagine it didn’t do too awful bad.
With all that being said, I’m not highly interested in taking a tour just because of the negative Nostalgia for me, however, anyone that’s actually interested in the electrical side, automation, Etc would love this tour.
I do remember being around these machines as a kid and seeing them cycle. It was always really interesting to watch how a bag of plastic pellets, whether it was abs, glass for nylon, etc, could go into a hopper at the top, melted, shot into a multicavity mold, coolant ran through the mold to cool the parts and dropped out the bottom in such a rapid cycle. Especially on 120 ton machines that had between 7 and up to 20 cavities in the molds.
It was definitely mesmerizing to watch, even as a young child.
That being said, I do wonder what machines are in use anymore because of the time that I was aware of all of this, the big ones were Newberry, Cincinnati Milacron and Sandretto.
So I say this, anyone that’s interested in automation, fluid hydraulics, electronics, go check it out. It is definitely worth it.