Soft drink giant adopts new tooling technology for making bottles
Canadian Plastics
The Coca-Cola Company recently announced it has adopting a new tooling manufacturing technology and is recommending its use throughout the soft drink company's global network of bottle suppliers. Meta...
The Coca-Cola Company recently announced it has adopting a new tooling manufacturing technology and is recommending its use throughout the soft drink company’s global network of bottle suppliers. Metallamics Inc. of Traverse City, MI is the developer of the patented technology for making custom-designed injection and blow-molding tools, which significantly reduces the time of the molding cycle for PET bottles.
“We conducted in-depth laboratory and industrial testing over an extended period of time to prove that this new technology directly impacts our corporate objectives of improved container quality and cost reduction,” says Chris Kjorlaug, principal engineer, package development and design for Coca-Cola.
Metallamics president Dr. Robert McDonald said the new technology, SMX, reduces cooling times required in the molding process by transferring heat uniformly from the molded part to the coolant within the mold.
“We took a fresh look at how a mold is designed,” McDonald says, explaining the thought process that led to the breakthrough. “We asked, what would happen if we made a mold backwards — what if we could wrap the perfect heat exchanger around a part first?”
McDonald, whose career also includes stints at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and Dow Plastics, founded Metallmics about eight years ago. The formal Coca-Cola agreement with Metallamics is nonexclusive. McDonald says the technology will also find a niche in automotive and other markets.
