What is Blow Moulding?

Blow Moulding is a process used to produce hollow plastic items from plastic raw material. The items produced will have an opening, but this can be smaller than the component itself, as the process does not require plastic to be formed around an inner metalcore. Examples of blow moulded components would be windscreen washer bottles, expansion tanks, coolant tanks, fuel tanks, HVAC ducting, sprayer reservoirs, water containers, to name a few. 

Advantage Blow Mouldings utilises a manufacturing process called Extrusion Blow Moulding. This process involves the extrusion of a tube of a hot, pliable plastic material called a ‘parison’ which lowers into position between the two halves of an open mould tool. The tool contains a cavity that is the shape of the required component when closed over the parison. Compressed air inside the parison forces the walls of material against the tool’s inner surfaces, where it is cooled. Once the plastic has solidified, the top of the parison (just above the mould tool’s upper surface) is cut, the mould opens, and the part is removed and trimmed of any excess material.

We mould our products on an Accumulator Head machine. This system extrudes and collects material to a set volume before using it to produce a parison.  This gives us greater control over the wall thickness and enables us to mould intricate shapes and maintain consistent wall thickness.