plasticseng wrote:Nah, Teeman. I'm still in the business; have been for 18 years. The variation will remain, like you said.
The only way they could make them really round would be to gate (inject) them in the center at the bore, which creates all kinds of other problems. It will be interesting to see what they come up with, but I would expect that there will still be plenty of opportunities for improvement.
If old age and faded memory aren't corrupting my thinking, molding plastic is somewhat more art than science on the production floor.
Little things like ambient temp and even humidity (not to mention variances in the material a supplier may provide unannounced to save a penny or two) can cause the process to go [censored] in no time... and you can be down for minutes to days until you figure out which way to hold your jaw...
least that was how our vendors wanted us to feel about the process
I did observe enough to know a gazillion things can go wrong in the process and make it hard to turn a profit some days.
(when you have to sell parts by the million, literally, to profit just a few thousands of dollars in some cases)
My son doesn't quite believe me sometimes when he gets a plastic toy at Chuck-E-Cheese and I ask him how much he thinks it is worth...
he'll say a dollar...
I'll point out probably less than half a penny.
-T