Houseware as a Product Class

Houseware is a broad product category and contains endless list of daily use household items. The main sub-categories of this product class include Tableware, Kitchenware, Outdoor Furniture, Bathroom Accessories and Home Furnishing Accessories.

Use of Plastic in Making Housewares

Housewares share some common characteristics like high mobility and light weight. Housewares are prone to frequent impacts and thus need to have high impact resistance and tensile strength. Housewares are expected to be colorful, have wide range of shape and size options, along with glossy finish. Due to above mentioned criteria, plastics become ideal material for making Housewares. Commonly used plastics for making housewares are: Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET), Polyethylene (PE, HDPE, LDPE), Polystyrene (PS, HIPS), Nylon (PA) and Polypropylene (PP).

Manufacturing Processes for Making Housewares

Extrusion Blow Moulding, Injection Moulding, Injection Blow Moulding and Injection Stretch Blow Moulding are the processes used for manufacturing Housewares. Injection Moulding is a fast process used to produce large number of identical items. Extrusion on the other hand is a continuous process, enabling production of long length of a product. However, continuous extrusions are often cut in application lengths.

Manufacturing Challenges for Producing Housewares

Moisture Problems

Nylon, Polycarbonate, ABS and Polypropylene are hygroscopic in nature and absorb moisture from their surroundings. Polyethylene and Polystyrene do not normally absorb much moisture but are able to carry significant moisture on their surface if not stored in dry environment during the transit to manufacturing facility. Improper drying of resins can cause defects in the product, like low tensile strength and impact resistance, surface cracking, internal cracking, surface lines, bubbles, silver streaking, etc. leading to rejection.

Mould Sweating

The Injection Moulding process involves injection of plastic melt into the mould and cooling the melt in the mould to take the desired shape. Water Chillers are used for quick cooling of plastic melts and to reduce the cooling time in a particular cycle. However, when chilled water is used for cooling the plastic melts, the moisture present in air in the vicinity of chilled mould surface condenses, leading to formation of water droplets on the mould surface (Mould Sweating).

Mould Sweating is undesirable, as the condensed water droplets tend to drip on the machine bed and seep into the mould, which causes rusting and severely affects the life of expensive mould and machine bed. Further, condensation in the core and cavity of the mould will lead to defects in the moulded component.