Hi all,

I'm new to the forum, and new to injection molding. I wanted to introduce myself and reach out to the community for ideas / advice / testimonials / etc. about an issue we have where I work.

First, my name is Kevin and I have been in injection molding for about 3 months now. I'm an Industrial Engineer so process improvement falls under the scope of my position and is the motivation for my question.

Now on to the question. We mold a lot of parts that are fairly small and we have a devil of a time getting the parts to drop onto the conveyor below our mold rather than scatter and end up all over the inside of our machines. We have some magnetic skirts that are sometimes used but they don't keep the parts from scattering above the bottom of the mold. Most of these molds make 10 or more parts per shot so the inside of the machine gets filled with scattered parts pretty quickly. To make it worse, many of the parts are very similar is appearance and size so a part from a previous job falling into the new job is a big issue...

Any of you who have faced similar situations what sort of containment strategies or containment aids have you used? Any that you found worked particularly well? Any that were failures that I shouldn't even look at? There are a few places that make various guards and shields but I can't find any reviews from people who have actually used them.

Thanks in advance and thanks for the forum, I'm sure I'll learn a lot.

Kevin