Plastic Injection Moulding in the Common Market
British engineer Alexander Parkes invented the very first artificial plastic in the mid nineteenth century. Naming the new material Parkesine, Parkes demonstrated that his creation could be heated, moulded, and cooled, retaining its shape once it had set. Parkesine was a long way from the plastics we know today; it was extremely flammable, expensive, and prone to cracking. It was not as easy to produce as it is now. Plastics developed over the remainder of the century, although it was not particularly a widely used material until the middle of the next century.
Parkes founded the Parkesine Company in 1866, with the intention of mass producing the material. Parkes’ company failed within two years due to the poor quality of the product; Parkes had cut corners in an attempt to reduce costs. It was also difficult to produce large quantities of the plastic using the rudimentary methods utilised by Parkes.
American inventors Isaiah and John Hyatt patented the very first plastic injection moulding machine in 1868 for their successor to Parkesine, which they named Celluloid. The new device was extremely crude compared to the complex injection moulding machines the industry uses nowadays; essentially it pushed plastic through a large, heated hypodermic needle into a mould (or “mold”, as the Americans would say). The basic process remains the same now, but it certainly doesn’t use a plunger to do it!
James Watson Hendry created the first screw injection machine following the demand for cheap plastic products created by the Second World War. Like the Hyatt brothers, Hendry was an American. The new machine gave its operator much more control over the speed and volume of plastic injected into the mould, creating much more intricately designed products, and made mass production much more feasible. Hendry eventually developed a gas assisted injection moulding process, which allowed for much larger items; including hollow products such as tubes and barrels because of the much quicker cooling time.
The aforementioned John Wesley Hyatt’s celluloid was the industry standard plastic for a number of years. Hyatt stated that he developed the plastic as a substitute for the ivory then used to make billiard balls, though it primarily became famous as it was flexible enough to be used as the film in cameras.
Due to the relatively low production cost involved, and the ease of manufacture, plastics are used in a massive variety of products today. They are versatile and durable, and therefore have already replaced many traditional construction materials, such as leather, wood, stone, bone, metal, ceramics and glass; it was not just Hyatt’s dream of plastic billiard balls that eventually came true.
Plastic injection moulding is a process still used today, as well as more modern methods such as vacuum forming plastics. The plastic industry has grown massively since the mid nineteenth century.
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