Straight from the Production Line! Taiwan’s Plastic Injection Machinery Supply Chain Forms Industry 4.0 Alliance

【新唐人亞太台 2019 年 06 月 01 日訊】After 50 years of development, Taiwan’s plastic injection machinery industry is now the 6th largest manufacturer and exporter in the world. The rapid development of the high-tech industry in recent years has forced the plastic injection processing industry to accelerate its transformation. We will head south to see a 45-year-old plastic injection molding machine manufacturer that began investing in smart technology 5 years ago for Industry 4.0. It also formed an alliance with other Taiwanese vendors in the supply chain to challenge the international market.

Cups with colored marble designs, bicycle handlebars and eyelash brushes are common everyday items that are generally made from plastic injection. The outer casing of car headlights and the polystyrene reels used for electronic capacitors all depend on plastic injection as well.

Yi-Hsiang Lin, Special Assistant to the Chairman at machinery company: “If it’s not made properly or has an uneven thickness, when you pull on it the differences in tension will make it snap, bringing the production line to a stop so it needs to be precise. Error margin is around 1mm.

Taiwan’s plastic injection machinery industry has been developing for more than 50 years. This plastic injection molding machine manufacturer in southern Taiwan has at least 45 years of experience. In 2000, it set an industry record by developing a heavy machine weighing 2,700 tonnes. In recent years, advances in the Internet as well as the development of the high-tech industry has forced the plastic injection & processing industry to embrace transformation as well. Lin said that they began investing in smart technology five years ago with a focus on Industry 4.0.

Yi-Hsiang Lin, Special Assistant to the Chairman at machinery company: “It can let us know it is going to break. Let us know in advance when to replace the faulty parts. You can, you know try for 100% yields in production. Here smart technology can help, and provide a direction.. It can help us eliminate all national boundaries in the machinery industry one day.

Lin took the initiative by looking for companies with related technologies to develop a smart control system for plastic injection & processing together. The system includes quality monitoring for production management, and production resume. For precision, the parameters set for the opening and closing of the molds are accurate to two decimal places. Real-time monitoring can also be achieved through a mobile phone.

Yi-Hsiang Lin, Special Assistant to the chairman of the machinery company: “You can’t take short cuts. We try during the design process to take the precision, thickness, the design of the platen and how many strips it can be, those are taken into consideration and calculated.We insist on the absolute best, and make sure it can last more than 10 years.”

To ensure machine quality, Lin selects Taiwanese suppliers very carefully. For the cross bars used in the machine, Lin chose the special steel used by Japanese tie-rods as their resilience was higher. Once the excess was cut away, it underwent a second automated precision machining process, making the steel exterior look brand new.

We now look at the casting factory. After being melted at a temperature of 1480 degrees, the gray cast metal undergoes nodularization and treatment to become high-performance cast iron. The removed graphite is in a nodular form, also known as nodular graphite cast iron. Testing must be repeated throughout the entire casting process. There are at least 6 challenges including the hardness, simulated lightning and sampling. This is crucial for extending the service life of the molds in the injection machine.

Yi-Hsiang Lin, Special Assistant to the chairman of the machinery company: “Here we can see if the number and roundness of the nodular graphite is acceptable. The rounder or the more numerous they are, the better this material will be.

Yi-Hsiang Lin, Special Assistant to the chairman of the machinery company: “Ordinary gray cast iron is just hard so it has no resilience. It might therefore just crack under pressure. We have several injection molding machines that use nodular graphite cast iron. These have a higher nodular graphite cast iron content. Its toughness is naturally used to extend its life and live for a longer time.

The nodular graphite cast iron is perfectly shaped by the automatic mold-making machine then sent to downstream factories for processing. It then goes to the injection molding machine manufacturer for QC, assembly and testing.

Yi-Hsiang Lin, Special Assistant to the chairman of the machinery company: “
We make what we can in Taiwan. Take our suppliers for example. They try to use the best incoming materials themselves and we ask them to use the best possible. People are in effect buying on word of mouth reputation, so I feel that the machinery will undoubtedly form into a cluster.”

Taiwan’s plastic injection machinery industry was worth US$1.40 billion in 2017 while exports exceeded US$1.1 billion. Taiwan was ranked the 6th largest producer and exporter in the world. The 2nd generation owner Yi-Hsiang Lin has carried on the company’s pioneering spirit by joining forces with related supply chain partners to enter the international market and illuminate the hard and soft power of Taiwan’s plastic injection machinery manufacturing.

Interview and author: Jin-Jin Li

Photography Post-Production: Hsi-Hong Yeh, Hui-Mo Chen

【Information】

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Shuenn Jaan Machinery Co. Ltd.

www.soongiant.com.tw

Telephone :886-6-2339590

Address :No. 803, Chung Shan N. Rd., Yung Kang District, Tainan City, Taiwan

Fax :886-6-2331745
E-Mail :shuennjaan2010@gmail.com

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