Plastic Blend Formulating & Optimizing - OptiMISER System

Blending formulation is a complex and multifaceted process. Properties that determine the formulation success are different for every molding process and manufacturer. Only The OptiMISER System builds into its software algorithms that represent decades of discoveries in resin behaviors, feedstock blends and formulation experience. And once the OptiMISER is set up, you get formulation solutions, that work, in seconds.

Say goodbye to guesswork. The solutions you’re looking for are right here.

Blow molding

The OptiMISER System’s software can be configured to formulate blends that enhance the quality, reliability and performance of your blow-molded products. Moreover, you can optimize blends specific to each product.  This will provide better processability, reducing costly scrap and the need for constant process changes.  All this while boosting your throughput rates.

While formulating optimized blends with consistent density, melt index and, of course, least cost is important, there are other equally important properties to optimize overall performance.  These properties could include impact strength, melt strength, processability, flexural modulus, tensile strength, environmental stress cracking, molecular weight distribution, rheological properties and a host of other characteristics.

Sheet & Film Extrusion and Thermoforming

With The OptiMISER System blend improvements go well beyond optimizing costs. The OptiMISER software can be configured to formulate blends for a host of other equally significant characteristics that offer value-added properties for your film and sheet products. The system’s rapid material characterization methods is why its formulation technology can deliver cost savings by blending with lower-cost materials.

Beyond using the standard density and melt index properties, other critical to quality characteristics are used to truly optimize each blend.  These quality contributors could include impact strength, melt strength, processability, elongation, thermoforming sag strength, tensile strength, flexural modulus, environmental stress cracking, molecular weight distribution, rheological properties and more.  This ability allows you to tailor your polymer to the critical properties important to your unique operations and products.

Injection Molding

Blends formulated with The OptiMISER System can enhance the quality and performance of injection-molded products.  These enhancements include process and end use.  OptiMISER’s advanced formulation software incorporates additional resin characteristics known to be critical to quality for injection molded products. Also, The OptiMISER System’s exclusive technology allows you to take advantage of lower-cost resins you may never have considered possible.

With every blend, you get formulations optimized not only for cost, but for additional key properties for high-quality product. In addition to consistent density and melt index, OptiMISER formulation calculations can include resin properties such as impact strength, melt strength, mold filling, processability, flexural modulus, tensile strength, environmental stress cracking, molecular weight distribution, rheological properties and others.

Pipe & Profile Extrusion

Eliminating stress cracking and other problems is just one of the benefits you get with The OptiMISER System.  Using proven algorithms for each material property, Advanced Blending Technologies’ formulation program can design unique blends that actually enhance your products.  All this while also improving the processability of your blends.

Beyond formulating blends with consistent density and melt index, The OptiMISER System’s software can incorporate other properties known to be critical to quality in pipe and profile extrusion. The software can take into account these characteristics:  impact strength, processability, flexural modulus, tensile strength, environmental stress cracking, NCTL, NCLS, rheological properties and others.  The OptiMISER is the best way to make the use of lower-cost resins possible and practical.

Why blend?
The plastic blending process allows you to combine properties of multiple components and generate blends for optimized performance. Blending offers the opportunity to utilize lower cost resins while maintaining or improving product performance.  Blending can lower costs, improve throughput and tailor material specifications to your products.  Blending can also produce a unique set of properties that are not available in a single resin.

Same performance at lower cost
The key to routine output of high-quality products starts with a clear understanding of the product requirements and the material performance properties for each resin.  When properly formulated, blends can perform with the same characteristics and reliability as virgin materials, but at lower cost.

How resins behave
In general, all resins are composed of a distribution of polymer chains with a different number of repeat strands or units. Because of this distribution of chain lengths, and thus molecular weights, describing the resin using just MI and density is inadequate for many applications.

But molecular weight and its distribution are critical considerations. Here’s why:

• In the melted state (called “extrudate”), molecular structure determines the processing characteristics
• In the solid state, molecular structure determines the all-important performance properties of the final product
• A wide distribution of molecular weights (a wide range of variations in chain lengths) makes extrudate easier to process
• A narrow distribution of molecular weights (less variation in chain length, more typical with virgin resins) makes extrudate more difficult to process

Polyethylene grades and properties

PE grades
Polyethylene is available in a wide range of grades. The OptiMISER System works with all grades of polyethylene.

• HDPE
• LLDPE
• MDPE
• Wide-specification PE
• Regrinds (post-industrial and post-consumer)
• Reprocessed (post-industrial and post-consumer)
• Recycled

PE properties
In the 50+ years since plastics became viable materials for many products, experts have determined that there many material properties that affect resin behavior in very important ways. A few of the frequently used properties are below:

• Density
• Elongation
• Environmental stress crack resistance (ESCR)
• Flexural modulus of elasticity
• Flexural strength
• Impact strength (determined via the Izod impact test or the Dart impact test)
• Melt index (MI)
• Modulus of elasticity
• Molecular weight
• Molecular weight distribution
• Processability
• Rheological properties
• Sag resistance
• Slow crack growth
• Tensile modulus of elasticity
• Tensile strength

Plastics behavior is determined by a wider range of specifications than simply melt index and density. Blending for MI and density alone does not ensure good processability or product performance. This is one reason why two different lots of the same polymer may have the same melt index and density but exhibit different behavior during processing.

The need for pre-blend testing
The growing availability and lower cost of recycled polyethylene resins makes them very attractive alternatives to virgin material.

To develop a successful formulation, you must know the key properties of each of the materials for the applications you’re working with. Not only does The OptiMISER System use material characterization, it offers you low-cost, rapid material characterization techniques. Once the materials are tested, the data is used in The OptiMISER System’s advanced formulization software.

Formulating a successful blend with The OptiMISER System
The technology starts with accurate material characterization. With this information, two or more components are brought together in an ideal combination to reshape and optimize key properties.

With The OptiMISER System, all the complex blend calculations are managed by the software, keeping the manufacturing process simple.

The enhanced resin combinations generate substantial material cost savings.