Polymer Processing
The Centre for Polymers and Composites (CPC) at Warwick Manufacturing Group offers advanced facilities for polymer compounding, extrusion, and injection moulding, enabling the development and optimisation of thermoplastic materials, formulations, and manufacturing processes for industrial applications.
Extrusion technology
In polymer extrusion, plastic pellets are melted and pushed through a heated barrel and die to produce continuous solid parts such as sheets, tubes or cables.
CPC capabilities include:
- Boston Matthew 60mm single screw extruder
- Collin E 20 single screw extruders
- Collin cast & blown film lab-line
- Xplore cast film micro-line
- Collin multi-filament fibre line
- Retech mono-filament & MDO drawing line
- 3D printing filament extruder
- Electrospinning & rotorspinning of nanofibres
Injection moulding
Injection moulding is a manufacturing process used to make precise, complex plastic parts in large quantities, for example automotive components, electronics casings and medical devices.
CPC capabilities include:
- Engel 60t, 140t & 1700t injection moulder
- Ferromatik Milacron K-TEC 60t 2K injection moulder
- Battenfeld Microsystem 50 micro-moulder
- Babyplast 6t micro-overmoulder
- Haake mini-injection moulder
- Thermoplastic overmoulding
- In-mould technology
Compounding and mixing
Compounding and mixing processes combine raw materials to create uniform, custom material. In compounding, polymers are blended with additives such as fillers, stabilisers and reinforcements to give it specific properties.
CPC capabilities include:
- Xtrutech XTS19 & Thermo Scientific TSE24 twinscrew extruder (kg-scale)
- Thermo Scientific Haake PolyLab OS & 11 twinscrew extruder (dg-scale)
- Xplore MC 15 micro-compounder (g-scale)
- Polymix 110 L two-roll mill
- Exakt three-roll mill
- Ultrasonic probe & homogenizers
- Wrights recycling granulator
Contact:
Claire Gerard: c.gerard@warwick.ac.uk / 07385 145064