News
Bioplastics: bio-based and biodegradable are not the same thing
"Bioplastic" sounds like a promise: a plastic from plants that would return to the earth. In fact the word covers two independent properties, and a single pack can have one without the other.
2 min read
Blister or bottle: two ways to pack a tablet
A tablet is sold either in a blister, one cavity per dose, or in a bottle where all the doses sit together. Neither is better in itself: they do not protect in the same way, nor against the same risks.
2 min read
Hot runners or cold runners: how material reaches the mould
Between the press nozzle and the cavities, molten material travels through a small network of channels. The route looks secondary. Yet it decides what is thrown away at each cycle, what the mould costs, and how easy it is to change colour.
2 min read
Tamper-evident packaging: proving first opening
A tamper-evident cap does not stop anyone from opening a bottle. It does something else: it proves the bottle has never been opened. That proof rests on a few slender plastic bridges, and getting them right is decided in the mould.
3 min read
Child-resistant caps: holding off the child without locking out the adult
A child-resistant cap is not just a cap that is harder to open. It is a measured compromise: hold out against a four-year-old, and remain usable by a seventy-year-old. An international standard says how to check it.
2 min read
Recycling codes: 1 for PET, 2 for HDPE, 5 for PP
Turn a bottle over: under its base, a small triangle surrounds a number. Many read it as a promise of recycling. The number says something else, and that is already a lot: the material the bottle is made of.
2 min read
Primary packaging: what touches the medicine
A medicine is sold in several nested layers of packaging, but only one of them touches it. That primary packaging is part of the product: its material goes into the marketing authorisation file, and changing it is never a unilateral decision.
3 min read
Food contact: what migration means
No plastic is perfectly inert. In contact with food it always gives up something, in tiny amounts. The rules do not demand that nothing passes: they set what is allowed to pass, and how much.
3 min read
What an injection mould costs, and why
A plastic cap costs next to nothing per unit. The mould that makes it is a capital investment. That is no paradox: almost the whole cost of an injection-moulded part is paid in advance, in steel.
3 min read
From mould to production: how a cap is born
A cap comes out of an injection press in a few seconds. Before that first part came weeks of drawing, machining and trials. Here is the path, step by step, from a closure idea to series production.
2 min read
EDM: machining the impossible shapes of a mould
A milling cutter is round: it cannot make a perfectly sharp inside corner. Hardened steel wears tools down. For such shapes, mould makers use a method that does not cut metal: it eats it away, spark after spark.
2 min read
Cosmetics: one shape, dozens of variants
In a pharmacy, two identical bottles are good news. On a cosmetics shelf it is the opposite: every range wants its own tint, feel and decoration. For the packaging maker, it all comes down to one question: what can change without remaking the mould?
3 min read