How to decide whether rotomolding is the right process for a plastic product?

There are many different moulding processes used to make a variety of plastic products for use daily across all industries. The most widely used processes include extrusion, blow moulding, injection moulding, vacuum forming and rotomolding.

There are a few important factors to take into consideration when choosing rotomolding to create plastic products. Here we have summed up some of the major factors.

Product design

First, it depends on the the size and shape of the product. Rotomolded product is seamless and hollow, which can be totally enclosed items or with openings. Rotomolding provides design and production flexibility. The process is used primarily to create complicated and multifaceted shapes with ribbing structures, textures, colors, molded-in threaded inserts, colored graphics and polyurethane foam-filled, multi wall section. For example, water filtration is not possible manufactured by blow molding or thermoforming. Rotomolding is well suited to produce very large hollow products because its moulds aren’t limited by size as other processes, e.g., playground equipment slides, fuel tanks, water tank, canoes, kayaks, which might not be feasible by other forming methods.

Material

There are different types of plastic material, and each of them has different properties that make it only suitable to very specific applications. Before a decision is made on the plastic manufacturing process, it’s worth thinking about what type of material to use. For example, in case of choosing liquid PVC plastisol, it needs to be produced by rotomolding as it is not feasible by thermofroming.

Functional requirement

It is also required to consider the function of the product, for example, in term of durability, what stresses, strains and temperatures it can withstand. Rotomolding offers a great solution to produce a rugged and durable products because of the high tensile strength, uniform wall thickness and single piece construction. Because of the high quality standards, such as airtight, watertight, excellent load-bearing properties, rotomolded products are well applicable to meet very demanding and rigorous specification. For example, the equipment shipping case and sensitive equipment storage case required to withstand the extreme, such as water, dust, chemical, shockproof, etc.

The factors outlined above mainly determine if rotomolding process is capable of producing the required shape in the chosen material to the exact functional requirement. There are a bit more, such as cost, volume, production lead time, etc. Please learn more about the advantages of rotomolding to see if this process is the right solution for you.