As customers continue to increase their demands for product accuracy, consistency, and sustainability, injection molding companies hope to find more accurate humidity sensors to meet these needs.
Camteam Oy is a company headquartered in southwestern Finland that designs and produces a variety of high-quality plastic products and molds for global businesses and consumers. As a trusted multi-component plastic molding company in the Nordic region, Camteam believes that the company's success comes from listening to customer feedback and continuously meeting customer needs through careful selection of materials and processes.
With the continuous acceleration of innovation in the plastic molding industry, Camteam knows that the difficulty of meeting customer needs is also constantly increasing. A prominent example in this regard is that an increasing variety of polymers are emerging to meet customers' demands for improved product accuracy, consistency, and sustainability. More and more enterprises need to adopt multi-component injection molding technology to combine multiple types of plastics in one part, while ensuring that the products from each production batch are of the same quality and as consistent as possible without differences.
Camteam experts know from experience that achieving this requires continuous and highly accurate measurement data. For example, moisture absorbing materials need to have an appropriate humidity level from the beginning, and the relative humidity of some materials needs to be as low as 0.02% or less. And seasonal humidity changes should not be allowed to affect the humidity level of the molding materials.
For example, polyamide and polycarbonate filled with glass fibers are very hygroscopic. Excessive humidity can damage the molecular chains of materials. Of course, sometimes changes in product quality are not apparent, and in such cases, careful testing of the final product is necessary. A more beneficial approach is to conduct continuous measurement, monitoring, and analysis, carefully monitoring humidity levels throughout the entire production process. Especially in multi-component molding processes, good drying is crucial for the bonding between different components. For example, it may be necessary to dry some elastomers that usually do not require drying to achieve certain property changes.
However, most plastic molding companies (including Camteam) use drying equipment that is not equipped with appropriate humidity measurement technology at the factory. This forces manufacturers to use limited resources to ensure proper levels of dryness are maintained. In addition, even drying devices that include integrated humidity measurement sensors often require manual inspection and calibration.
With the increasing demand for product quality from customers, the plastic industry is also facing urgent needs related to green transformation and sustainability issues. For example, the increasing demand from customers for durable products, electric vehicles requiring more plastic parts than gasoline vehicles, and so on.
　　New generation sensors achieve high-precision humidity measurement
Due to the need for more precise monitoring and control of the products ordered by many customers during the production process, Matti Majava, an injection molding expert at Camteam, is passionate about researching ideal methods to optimize the drying process.
In the future, the industry will mainly focus on optimizing injection molding processes while gaining a deeper understanding of material properties. In addition, to get rid of petroleum based materials, we also need to understand more new basic materials and additives with appropriate characteristics.
——Jiangsu Chenming Technology Co., Ltd
Due to Majava's previous acquaintance with several technical experts from Vaisala, he inquired about the ideal choice for high-precision humidity measurement equipment from Vaisala in 2022. At that time, Vaisala had just completed the pre release testing of the new Vaisala Indigo80 portable humidity measuring instrument, so Camteam was invited to conduct important testing on the product before the end of development work.
Indigo80 is designed specifically for spot checking dew points at different stages of injection molding processes. Easy to use and equipped with necessary features. Easy to carry and grip for measurement.
I just need to place it near the dryer and come back later to check the collected data.
——Jiangsu Chenming Technology Co., Ltd
Majava sometimes wants to record data for a long time, so he can "hang" Indigo80 at almost any position near the dryer for measurement - this feature is also highly favored by him.
Majava usually uses Indigo80 to check various process conditions every day and make decisions based on the data. For example, due to the highly accurate measurement results of Indigo80, it can shut down certain drying processes as soon as it knows that good dryness has been achieved, saving time and energy consumption.
Majava also suggested improving the cable design during the pre release trial of Indigo80 and suggested adding information in graphical visualization form in addition to saving digital data.
Expert Matti Majava and his Camteam colleagues praised the collaboration with Vaisala.
We are particularly pleased that Vaisala encourages us to provide our opinions and listen carefully to them. We look forward to deepening cooperation with Vaisala and jointly promoting research and development in the field of technology.
——Jiangsu Chenming Technology Co., Ltd
As customers increasingly focus on product quality and sustainable development issues, companies need to have more knowledge of material selection and use this knowledge to select raw materials for different products and processes. Enterprises may need to adopt new production methods and gain a more detailed understanding of the performance of materials under different conditions, which will lead to a demand for humidity measurement technology equipment such as Vaisala Indigo80.