Thermoforming is the process of heating huge sheets of plastic to a very high temperature and cooling them into the required format. Vacuum forming is a sub-process or a type of thermoforming in which a vacuum is applied between the molds and the plastic to create various shapes. Thermoforming has several advantages and disadvantages compared to other plastic molding methods such as injection molding. In addition to vacuum forming, various other methods such as drape forming, twin sheet forming, and pressure forming can be incorporated along with thermoforming to produce different types of products. Various types of plastic can be molded in the method.
Disadvantages of thermoforming
1. Thermoforming is quite expensive. Compared to other methods such as injection molding, this method can cost up to 50% more.
2. Large plastic sheets are used in the method. They need to be fed into the rollers over and over again. This leads to a lot of extrusion.
3. The plastic street is stretched under pressure in this method. Therefore, products formed by thermoforming break at a certain temperature.
4. Thermoforming uses more plastic than other methods. Almost 10-20% more plastic is used to make any product using this method. This adds to the cost and creates a lot of waste as well.
5. The vacuum forming process carried out together with thermoforming sometimes does not give the required shapes. The entire process must be repeated, which is expensive and time consuming.
Advantages of thermoforming
There are several advantages to using this method despite all these disadvantages.
1. Thermoforming is the only method in which huge sheets of plastic can be molded into huge objects. All other methods are used only to make small objects.
2. Although the process is expensive, the tools required for trading are quite cheap. Injection molding machinery is nearly 33% more expensive than thermoforming machinery tooling.
3. Various different products can be prepared on the thermoforming machines. Only certain products can be prepared on other machines. Almost all types of plastic can be used for plastic. Other methods use only specific plastic for production.
4. Skilled labor to operate thermoforming machinery is abundantly available. But, workers capable of operating vacuum forming or injection molding machinery are far fewer.
5. Higher quality products that use more plastic are formed in the method. Therefore, they are more durable than objects created via other local methods.
There are many more advantages to the method. Although most of the packaging industries prefer expensive and time-consuming thermoformed products due to their high quality.
