Plastic Technology - PLAST 220

Course Description

This course provides an understanding of plastic part design. Students will learn design requirements, design features, quality and tolerances, plastic material selection for specific processes, part costs and rapid prototyping techniques. Emphasis will be placed on part design for injection molding. Part design for compression molding, blow molding, extrusion, thermoforming and composite manufacturing processes also will be covered.

Prerequisites

(A requirement that must be completed before taking this course.)

Course Competencies

Upon successful completion of the course, the student should be able to:

• Describe plastic product design requirements such as die draw, draft angle and typical nominal wall thickness for injection, compression, thermoforming, blow molding and composite manufacturing processes.
• Identify various part design features such as depression, undercut, projection, gusset, rib and boss.
• Explain how design affects plastic part quality and performance.
• Apply criteria to select a specific plastic process for a given part.
• Differentiate the advantages and limitations of various part features.
• Describe typical tolerances for plastic parts.
• Describe basic requirements for identifying optimum plastic material for various plastic parts.
• Describe the importance of plastic part design in the overall cost of a finished product.
• Describe the basic rapid prototype methods utilized to verify a plastic product design prior to production manufacturing.
• Identify common plastic part defects based on design, material, tooling and process.
• Describe Concept Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) and Design FMEA and why they are used for plastic part design.
• Recommend mold filling analysis simulation of virtual plastic part design.
• Describe Additive Manufacturing/3D Printing for designing next generation plastics parts.
• Adhere to plastics industry safety guidelines when designing plastic parts.

Course Schedule

Currently no sections of this class are being offered.