Profile Extrusions

Profile Extrusions
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When you take a sip of your favorite juice with a drinking straw, do you ever wonder how that simple yet ingenious object is produced? Even items that seem as trivial as a drinking straw have science behind them and are products of major technologies.

Drinking straws are made in a manufacturing process called profile extrusion. This is the process of manufacturing lengthy objects with a continuous cross-section. Other items produced with this process are plastic gutters, window trimming, and decorative molding.

So how does profile extrusion work? Take for example the drinking straw. Plastic pellets are fed into a machine known as the extruder. The plastic is then continuously conveyed forward by a rotating screw. This screw is found inside a heated barrel softens the plastic with the heat and friction. The now soft plastic is then forced through a die. A die is a metal plate at the end of the extruder. The section is cut out of its interior to create a shape that the material will follow. It works like the opening of a toothpaste tube. The material then emerges from the die and goes directly into cool water, which solidifies the plastic. From there, the solid plastic is conveyed into the rollers.

Aside from plastic, rubber and some metals can also be processed and made into more useful items through profile extrusion.

Profile extrusion is usually carried out using only one screw extruder that melts the material and conveys it through a die. The profile is then formed by passing through a cool water bath. The profile is taken away by a haul-off. It is then cut to the appropriate size.

The next time you drink something with a straw, remember the unique process it has gone through - profile extrusion.
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