Inclosia Solutions Develops New Approach to Improve Appearance

Plastic molded product body decorated with wood and metal.

It looks like expensive hand-made consumer electronic products stand out among many competitors. Inclosia Solutions, a subsidiary of Dow Plastics, has developed a great way to package large quantities of products to improve their appearance. The company's EXO monolithic molding technology opens up a new way of adding decorative fibers to plastic parts. It can organically fuse various wood plywood and decorative metal foils with plastic molded thermoplastic shells. together. Tom Tarnowski, director and engineer at Inclosia, said, "We can use any wood or metal as a decorative material, as long as they can be made into thin sheets like plywood or metal foil."

Regardless of which of the decorative materials is chosen, the EXO process consists of three steps: first the robot or worker inserts the pre-cut fabric, wood or metal into the mould cavity, and then injects a hot plastic, such as PC/ABS. It is sprayed onto the back of the decorative material and is then injected into an elastomer, which fills the edges and crevices of the first two material bodies and finally completes the machining of the part. Inclosia's overall molding technology has overcome the following technical difficulties, such as the combination of CTE materials, the bonding between materials, and the complexity of tools and processes. Tarnowski said, "Our experts have to adjust the overall shaping process to meet the processing requirements of a variety of decorative materials, but also to understand the part geometry."

Despite the appearance of high-end consumer goods, the production process of this product can still be mass-produced. In addition to the cost of spray molding, the cost of wood and metal in the overall molding is usually negligible unless your production starts at 10,000 and is ready to grow to 1,000,000.