European plastics society introduces ‘green’ standard for injection molding

Euromap 60, a new European solid industry standard designed to measure environmental friendliness in injection molding machines, has been introduced.

“Euromap 60 is devoted to the standardisation of the type of measurement to get the specific machine-related energy consumption of an injection molding machine,” said Joachim Vettkötter, technical director of Euromap, the European association for plastics machinery that passed Euromap 60. “The important thing is that now you have a real basis to compare the energy consumption of machines, whether they have hydraulic drives or electrical drives, or if they are hybrid machines.”

According to a news release, Euromap 60 covers thermoplastic injection molding machines with a single injection unit and a reciprocating screw, horizontal clamping and an electrically heated barrel. It excludes energy used to cool water for the machine and mold, and for compressed air.

The test uses an adjustable nozzle and squirts a shot of polypropylene into the air. The Euromap 60 standard spells out details about the nozzle, which each press maker will have to provide.

According to the news release, Euromap 60 gives cycle parameters for the three common injection molding applications: thin-wall parts, technical parts and thick-wall parts. For each type of part, the standard lists injection speed, pressure and time, part ejection and other parameters. The necessary injection pressure is set using the adjustable nozzle, according to the tables given in the document.