ABS, PET, TPE

After a long week of meeting with structural engineers and contractors, we had the pleasure of spending an afternoon in a plastics factory in the southern outskirts of Bangkok yesterday. We learned about the differences between injection-molding and blow-molding, saw all types of plastic pellets being mixed with pigment, witnessed some very serious (and very hot) machinery at work, watched igloos and coolers being insulated and assembled, and sifted through a room full of very expensive water-cooled billet steel molds.


Melted polypropylene waste from the injection-molding process, to be ground up and re-melted.


Watching the injection-molding process with Khun Saman.


An old-school machine heats up thick domes of PET before being blow-molded into a water bottle.


Their stock of steel molds-- each costs (on average) $2000 to fabricate. Because they are too heavy to carry, they are lifted and put into place with beam trolleys. An in-house metal shop is fully-equipped to fabricate and fix molds when necessary.


A blow-molding machine (my personal favorite) makes translucent water bottles.