A system is disclosed for micro-molding articles. The system melts and pre-pressurizes thermoplastic material to a first level, within a plasticizing barrel. The melt pressure of the thermoplastic material is manipulated to a second level, within a hot runner. The melt pressure of the thermoplastic material is manipulated to an ultra-cavity packing pressure within a valve gate nozzle.

A plasticizing device that plasticizes a material and includes a drive motor, a screw that is rotated by the drive motor and that has a grooved face provided with a groove, a barrel that has an opposed face opposed to the grooved face and that includes a communication hole communicating with the groove at the opposed face, a heating section that heats the material supplied to the groove, a first temperature sensor that measures a temperature of the groove, and a control unit that controls the drive motor, wherein the control unit performs a first process for rotating the screw at a first rotation speed when a temperature measured by the first temperature sensor is a first temperature, and a second process for rotating the screw at a second rotation speed lower than the first rotation speed when a second measured temperature measured is higher than the first temperature.

An injection molding machine includes: a cylinder that holds a molding material to be injected into a mold; a plasticizing member provided in the cylinder so as to be movable and rotatable; a temperature measurer that measures a temperature of the cylinder or of the mold; and a period setting unit configured to set a cold start prevention period, which is a period for restricting the injection of the molding material into the mold, based on the temperature measured by the temperature measurer until a temperature of the molding material or the temperature of the mold rises. The period setting unit stores temperature-time data in which the temperature measured by the temperature measurer is associated with time, and adjusts the cold start prevention period based on an actual temperature of the stored temperature-time data.

A method is disclosed for micro-molding articles. The method comprises melting and pre-pressurizing thermoplastic material to a first level, within a plasticizing barrel. The melt pressure of the thermoplastic material is manipulated to a second level, within a hot runner. The melt pressure of the thermoplastic material is manipulated to an ultra-cavity packing pressure within a valve gate nozzle.

An injection molding machine having vent mechanism includes a plastication device, an injection device, a junction, a vent-up sensor, and a controller. The vent-up sensor detects vent-up. When the vent-up is detected, the controller switches from normal conditions to vent-up suppression conditions. The vent-up suppression conditions have at least one of the followings: increasing a rotational speed of the plastication screw to be higher than that in the normal conditions; using retreat-metering when the retreat-metering is not performed in the normal conditions, wherein in the retreat-metering, in addition to a pressure of the resin material, a force in a retreat direction is applied to the injection plunger to move the injection plunger at a predetermined retreat speed in the metering; and increasing the retreat speed of the injection plunger to be higher than that in the normal conditions when the retreat-metering is performed in the normal conditions.

A method or system for industrial process optimization, including sensing data about an industrial process cycle that operates according to a set of process setpoints; determining a target performance for the process cycle based on the sensed data; selecting process set-points from a hypothesis space for a future industrial process cycle based on the target performance, and updating the hypothesis space.

A shaping machine or a handling apparatus for a shaping machine includes at least one measuring device for measuring the spacing of two selected points of the shaping machine or the handling apparatus. Furthermore, the at least one measuring device has at least one piezoresistive micromechanical sensor.

A plasticizing device includes a drive motor, a rotor that is rotated by the drive motor and has a groove formed face with a groove formed therein, a barrel that is opposed to the groove formed face and has a communication hole, a heating portion that heats a material in a pellet form supplied between the groove and the barrel, and a control unit that controls the drive motor and the heating portion so as to plasticize the material supplied between the groove and the barrel and cause the material to flow out from the communication hole. The heating portion has a first heating portion and a second heating portion disposed closer to the communication hole than the first heating portion, and the barrel has a first region and a second region that is closer to the communication hole than the first region. The control unit individually controls the first heating portion and the second heating portion so that a temperature of the second region is higher than a temperature of the first region.

A method of influencing a backpressure length and/or a screw return speed in an axially extending plasticizing cylinder of a plasticizing unit for an injection moulding machine including a plasticizing screw arranged displaceably and rotatably in a cylinder bore of the plasticizing cylinder. Metering of plastic granulate fed to the plasticizing unit is carried out in dependence on the desired backpressure length in the plasticizing unit, and the plasticizing unit is operated in underfed mode.

A remote controller can be provided on any apparatus that employs feedback control from a native controller to add functionality to the apparatus where the native controller is not capable of providing such functionality independently.