As anyone familiar with hot-runner injection molds knows, there are two types of gating: valve gating and thermal (or hot tip) gating. As a rule, SIPA uses valve gating, essentially because its greater sophistication allows for more control and better injection point quality (e.g. less risk of stinging and/or crowning). That makes valve gating more expensive, but SIPA believes the price is worth paying. This is the case with injection molds that SIPA makes for single-stage and two-stage PET bottle production processes.
Some people prefer the more economic option, however. Certainly in the area of single-stage injection-stretch-blow molding, there are many processors using equipment not built by SIPA who have taken this route and have built up large stocks of ISBM injection molds fitted with thermal gating hot runners.
As anyone familiar with SIPA knows, the company excels in offering compatibility. In particular, SIPA supplies machines that accept molds from other suppliers, and vice-versa, the molds that SIPA builds can be used on other brands of machines.
From the very beginning, developed its smaller ISBM systems, branded ECS-SP, with the embedded flexibility to run with injection molds fitted with either valve gates or thermal. So a processor, who already has molds with thermal gates (built by competition) that have been running on ISBM machines from rivals, can install them in a SIPA ECS-SP system, with all of its advantages in performance, energy-efficiency, low maintenance and more, and still use those existing molds.
But here is what’s new: SIPA has recently further developed its smaller ISBM systems by developing its own thermal gating hot runners, so that full and easy compatibility on the main competitor’s machine is now granted. It means that a processor who already has single-stage ISBM systems from a machine supplier that favors thermal gating can use molds from SIPA too.
SIPA is famous around the world for the quality and performance of its molds (blow molds as well as injection molds, we hasten to note) as well as its machines, so this is an option worthy of serious consideration.
All told, this makes SIPA's single-stage ISBM proposal extremely flexible, as well as offering excellent performance and first-rate quality.