Ice pack, stackable gas can take home awards

Oak Brook, Ill. — An ice pack designed to work with Rubbermaid's LunchBlox Containers and a stackable gas can both won category awards and People's Choice awards at the Annual Blow Molders Conference.

The Blow Molding division of the Society of Plastics Engineers sponsored the conference, held Oct. 2-4 in Oak Brook.

Rubbermaid, part of Newell Brands Inc., won first place in the food packaging category for its Medium Blue Ice Pack. Modular food containers snap together with the ice pack.

The part was submitted by Rubbermaid and FGH Systems Inc., a maker of blow molded tooling in Denville, N.J. The ice pack had been produced in single-cavity molds with side-needle blow, but there were some consistency issues with port/fill-hole formation, the formation of the seat for the plug weld and low-volume output, according to the award submission.

FGH did mold development and sampling to test the relocation of port holes, before going into production. The calibration of the port hole formation greatly improved the hold quality and process efficiency.

Rubbermaid is running the parts on a Uniloy-Milacron UMS 16.D shuttle machine, with a W. Muller extrusion head and production mold and tooling turnkey package from FGH. The parts are fully deflashed in the machine and placed on a conveyor belt.

Blow molding conference attendees picked the ice pack for a People's Choice winner.

In the beverage packaging category, blow molding machinery supplier Bekum America Corp. submitted both the first- and second-place winners: two blow molded drinking glasses that have the look and feel of glass, both made by custom blow molder Goright Plastics, Printing & Logistics LLC in Aurora, Colo.

Both products use Eastman Chemical Co.'s Tritan copolyester. Goright uses extrusion blow molding to make both the first-place GO Perfect Pint, which took first place, and the 14-ounce Whiskey Glass. Both are shatterproof and dishwasher safe. Mid-America Machining Inc. of Brooklyn, Mich., made the molds.

For the pharmaceutical packaging category, Silgan Plastics won first place for a 750 OmniPod dispenser made for V-Jon Inc., the maker of Germ-X hand sanitizer. Silgan molds the bottle on a Nissei ASB 650 NHII machine, running a six-cavity mold from Big 3 Precision Products Inc. in Pleasant Hill, Mo.

The OmniPod has just four components, far fewer components than other dispensing systems, Silgan said. The dispenser clearly shows the product.

Regency Plastics Inc. of Ubly, Mich., won a People's Choice and first place in the industrial category for consumer goods for its stackable gas cans for Fuelworx LLC. The conveniently stored cans also sport a fast-flow nozzle, a push-button vent and an additional handle at the rear of the can for easy handing while pouring fuel.

The mold is from H&H Mold and Tooling of Fairfield, Iowa.

Winning first place in the industrial category for automotive/transportation was Hawkeye Preferred Tooling Group of Charles City, Iowa, for a coextrusion blow molded clean-side duct for a glider truck kit from Harrison Truck Centers.

Glider semitruck tractors are brand-new trucks fitted with remanufactured diesel engines that do not require diesel exhaust fluid since they are grandfathered in for emissions standards, according to Hawkeye. The duct goes from the air cleaner housing to the engine.

Hawkeye is 3D blow molded using sequential coextrusion of polypropylene and thermoplastic elastomer on a Placo blow molding machine. Hawkeye assisted with the part design, built the mold and ran sample parts.

The small-diameter round end of the duck has a skin of PP on the outer layer and TPE on the inner layer. Both the oval rigid opening and the round flexible opening are machined to finish the inside diameters. The small round end is flexible for sealing. The large oval opening has a rubber boot, which is part of the air cleaner assembly for sealing.

In the "other" category of industrial, Silgan Plastics won first place for a motor oil dispenser with a flexible spout and hinged lid for Chevron Havoline motor oil. The reusable dispensing containers are provided to automotive service shops, which buy the oil in a bag-in-box format. Both dispenser and oil are provided in a branded rack stand.

The container is molded from high density polyethylene. The flexible spout is made from a blend of high- and low-density PE.

Silgan officials said the design allowed Silgan to remain relevant in the supply chain, even though the bag-in-box reduced overall plastic consumption by 89 percent from using individual quart bottles.