Polymer Engineering Center > Facilities

Laboratories

Photo: Student performing a rheological test
A student performs a rheological test of an anisotropic polymer inorganic composite sample

Photo: Professor Osswald and students operate a 22-ton injection molding machine
Professor Osswald and students operate a 22-ton injection molding machine

  

The laboratories of the Polymer Engineering Center have a wide range of polymer-processing machines, including an Arburg 55-ton co-injection molding machine with MuCell capability, a Welding Engineers counter-rotating twin screw extruder, a Brabender batch mixer, an Engel 55-ton tiebarless injection molding machine, a lab-scale 22-ton injection molding machine, blow molding and thermoforming equipment, and a film blowing line. Recently, faculty at PEC received a Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grant from NSF to acquire a modular, instrumented single-screw extruder with sensors and a multi-function co-injection molding machine as experimental instruments for both research and education at the PEC. In addition, our center has a variety of measuring equipment such as a special patented Sliding-plate rheometer, an AR1000 R&D grade rheometer, a Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA), and an on-loan Thermo-gravimetric Analyzer (TGA) for material characterization.

Equipment

  • Blow Molding Machine

  • Compression Molding Machine

  • Film Blowing Machine

  • Roller Coating Machine

  • Single-Screw Extruder (Extrudex)*

  • Single-Screw Extruder (Brabender)

  • Sliding Plate Rheometer

  • Thermoforming Machine

Photo: Engel Injection Molding Machine
Engel Injection Molding Machine

 

 

 

Photo: Arburg Co-Injection Molding Machine
Arburg Two-Color Co-injection Molding Machine

 

  • Twin Screw Extruder

  • 22-ton Boy Injection Molding Machine

  • 50-ton Boy Injection Molding Machine

  • 55-ton Engel Injection Molding Machine

  • 55-ton Arburg Two-color, Co-injection Molding Machine w/ MuCell Capability*

  • Special vertical injection molding machine for semi-solid alloy casting
    * w/ NSF MRI Grant

 

extruder
extruder caption
extruder
extruder caption

 

Computing Resources

Photo: Polymer Engineering Center computer lab
Polymer Engineering Center computer lab

 

The PEC computer laboratory is equipped with two SGI (IRIX 6.5) workstations and several Pentium II, Pentium III, and Xeon workstations running Linux and Windows 2000. In-house research codes and many polymer-related commercial CAE software packages, including C-MOLD, CADMOULD, CADPRESS, and Moldflow, are available for educational and research purposes. The commercial compression molding software, CADPRESS, was originally developed at the center.

Photo: Professor Osswald in discussion with Juan Pablo Hernandez
Professor Osswald in discussion with Juan Pable Hernandez
Photo: Computer simulation of an injection mold filling
Computer simulation of an injection mold filling

Related Information
Information about the upcoming renovation of the Mechanical Engineering Building can be found at this site. And information about the Engineering Centers Building, can be found at this site.