Moldflow Plastics Labs

Rely on Moldflow Plastics Labs (MPL) for state-of-the-art material testing services, expert data fitting services, and the most extensive material databases for Moldflow software products.

Material Testing Services - The MPL Difference...

For thermoplastic materials:

Viscosity: MPL offers a range of test methods to best suit your needs, including capillary rheology and injection molding rheology. For certain materials, capillary rheology and injection molding rheology will produce comparable results. However, for many materials, the melt preparation method significantly affects the polymer behavior and measured properties. MPL has developed a state-of-the-art injection molding rheometer to test materials affected by the melt preparation method. As a result, the data yields more accurate simulation results than data obtained by other standard rheology techniques.

Viscosity data of a PA6 material measured on MPL's injection molding rheometer yields more accurate simulation results compared to standard capillary rheology data.

Mold verification: Confidence in simulation results comes from knowing that the data set used will result in accurate software predictions. MPL is the only lab that performs multiple mold trials and compares software predictions with in-mold performance.

Shrinkage: Theoretical models cannot account for all the effects of processing conditions on material behavior. MPL is the only lab that performs up to 28 different mold trials to quantify and model the effects of processing conditions on the material’s shrinkage behavior. Molding experiments are conducted over a range of part thicknesses, melt temperatures, mold temperatures, filling profiles and packing profiles. Actual part shrinkage is measured and the Corrected Residual In-Mold Stress (CRIMS) and strain models are fit to the data, providing superior shrinkage prediction accuracy.

MPL's molding trials and the resulting shrinkage data combined with the CRIMS model substantially increased the accuracy of part shrinkage predictions on this automotive instrument panel fascia.

Sample drying and moisture analysis: Sample moisture greatly affects polymer behavior and measured properties. MPL preprocesses samples using hopper dryers as used in the plastic processing industry. This provides for more uniform and predictable material drying than standard laboratory ovens. Prior to testing, sample moisture level is confirmed by means of Karl Fisher moisture analysis.

For reactive (thermoset) materials:

Sample preprocessing: MPL conducts sample storage, mixing and preprocessing to duplicate processing industry practices.