This article is a comprehensive gudie for choosing a Plastic crate making machine.
Plastic crates and baskets are in great demand and wide use in industry and agriculture. In a factory, plastic crates are often used for assembling parts, while in agriculture, they are used for potatoes, tomatoes, and other fresh vegetables.
Like other plastic injection molding products, plastic crate manufacturing needs a plastic crate injection molding machine and a crate injection mold, and some other plastic auxiliary equipment.
Plastic crate material
Generally, plastic crate materials are PP or PE, and some factories use recycled materials to make plastic crates to save money. If you want to know the current price of the material, contact us directly.
Plastic crate mold
Plastic crate mold is used to shape melted plastic into a solid plastic crate.
We can make plastic crate mold according to your crate size, weight, and drawings.
Different mold steels, different mold prices.
You can choose #45 steel, P20, 718H, H13, 4Cr13, S136 as mold steels. Contact us to know more details.
Plastic crate making machine
Plastic crate making machines control plastic material melting, inject the molten material into molds, provide pressure to open and close mold, and eject the plastic crate.
When using recycled plastic pellets, the barrel and screw need much more wear-resistant.
In general, the basket and crate size is large, and need at least 450T injection molding machine to make them.
Below are some of our plastic basket injection molding machines.
Auxiliary Equipment
Blenders
To make colorful plastic crates, you need to add masterbatches or color powder into plastic pellets.
Using a blender to mix the plastic pellets and masterbatches evenly can ensure that the products have no color difference and the color is consistent.
Autoloader
Without vacuum autoloaders, you need to load all the material manually, that would be a lot of manual labor over there and it’s not a very effective way.
In terms of labor cost, buying a vacuum autoloader would be an economic way to load materials.
Otherwise, if the labor cost is very low in your country, you can save money on buying a vacuum autoloader.
Hopper dryer
A good hopper dryer can control the temperature more accurately, eliminate the moisture of plastic pellets, and make the injection-molded products without bubbles and flashes.
The majority of poorly molded plastic products derive from poor dehumidification and drying.
The American Society of Plastics recommends that plastics must be dried to a moisture content of less than 0.02% before molding.
Most of these defects are caused by inadequate dehumidification and drying of plastics before molding.
Air chiller
The chiller is applied for mold cooling, which can greatly improve the surface of plastic products, accelerate product molding, easy demolding.
An air chiller don’t need to exchange water with a cooling tower, is very easy to use and effective.
Cooling tower
The injection molding machine is driven by hydraulic oil , the hydraulic oil circulation process will generate heat, resulting in the hydraulic oil temperature rise.
In order to transfer pressure efficiently, the hydraulic oil needs to work in the right temperature range.
Therefore, heat exchange through cooling towers and oil coolers effectively reduces the temperature of the hydraulic oil.
Robot
Automated production is becoming a necessity in more and more factories, especially in developed countries.
The increasing cost of labor and the instability of manual work has led more factories to preference to robots.
Robots can do some jobs better and require only very low maintenance.
In plastic crates manufacturing process, robots can take out plastic crates easily.
Conveyor
After the robot takes out the plastic crate from plastic crate mold, the plastic crates will be put on the conveyor, and then the conveyor belt deliver to the inspection station.
Granulator
If those injection molding crates are perfect, they will be packaged.
Otherwise, if they are defective, there is no way to sell them and can only be crushed into recycled plastic pellets for reuse.
In the granulating process, a granulator or crusher would be needed.
And the plastic crates are generally big, need bigger granulators to crush.
Plastic crate making machine price
If calculating a plastic crate making machine price, we need to know more details about the plastic crate, like size, weight, material, mold material requirements…
here we just give you an example of manufacturing a 700g 490*300*200mm plastic crate.
The plastic crate making machine quotation below:
Plastic crate making machine |  | $72,680.00 |
200kg Color Mixer |  | $1960.00 |
200kg Hopper Dryer |  | $1160.00 |
16hp Crusher |  | $7,360.00 |
1.5hp Autoloader |  | $990.00 |
10hp Air Chiller |  | $3,500.00 |
50T Cooling Tower |  | $1,800.00 |
1cavity 700g 490*300*200mm plastic crate mold |  | $12,280.00 |
Total FOB USD | $101,730.00 |
Plastic crate making machine installation
Preparation Installation
- Chose position for the machine
- Making a good foundation
- Power Source position
- Preparing a position for cooling water
Unload the machine
Use a crane to unload the machine from a container, pay attention to the stability and balance of the machine when carrying it.
Installation of Machine
- Keep the balance of the machine.
- Install all the parts and components back to the machine.
- Add anti-wear hydraulic oil
NOTE: Don’t start the pump motor within three hours after filling oil into the tank, otherwise the pump could be damaged. (Lot of air exists in the oil which is just filled into the tank)
Power Connection
The power connection could be under the guidance of an electric engineer.
Plastic crate injection molding troubleshooting
How to solve injection molding plastic crate whitening?
Whiteout caused by poor plasticization or demolding collision.
Demoulding deformation
If the deformation occurs in the test mold stage, we should consider whether the mold top bar is too thin, uneven distribution or improper setting of the release slope, etc.; if the deformation occurs in the production process, it is the improper setting of process parameters, such as short cooling time, too high mold temperature, resulting in poor cooling of the plastic crate, which should be adjusted accordingly.
Wrinkles at the distal end of the sprue
This is caused by a larger mold and premature cooling of the front end of the material flow, which can be solved by increasing the mold temperature and raising the melt temperature.
Shortage of material
Plastic crate in the test mold stage began to appear this phenomenon may be because the screw position adjustment is not accurate, if not this case, maybe low melt temperature, mold temperature is not enough, or secondary injection pressure and the rate is not high caused. These two cases do the corresponding adjustment on the line, of course, for the closed vacuum loading machine, to confirm whether the raw materials are sufficient.
Uneven colors or stray colors
This situation is mainly caused by the raw materials in the barrel staying too long, the mold has a dead angle, uneven plasticization, etc.