Reading Reaction "Materials Engineering"

This article is about the materials that could replace the metal or alloy which already exist and are used in our life. Author took the parts of engine in dirt-track vehicles for instance. A carburetor serves as converting the fuel into air-fuel mixture and feeds this mixture into the cylinders and also, equips with pickup tubes made from PPA. Some companies are planning to use the plastic parts in the engine such as this pickup tubes instead of aluminum by reason of lowering the cost. However, severe heat-to-cool cycles of the parts in the dirt-track competitions causes to transform the pickup tubes. Therefore, the companies are trying to develop the materials which are capable of enduring the harsh heat cycles. On the other hand, in the cardboard packaging industry, a Germany’s company supplies a different kind of cardboard packaging from previous one. This new type of packaging is capable of strong moisture-barrier without a plastic-film wrapper so that it would have least impact in our ecology and lower in cost.

Lately there are lots of plastic products in our every day life for reason of lightening the parts and lowering the cost and ease of manufacturing. As everyone knows, the plastic products are useful for our life so that these products seem to be increasing in the future. However, these products also have some problems. For example, tiny organism cannot resolve the plastic garbage and also burning the plastic products causes dioxin contamination. These are significant problem for our life.
The Japan Steel Works, Ltd. for which I work manufactures the Injection Molding Machines and also, I belong to the molding machinery design group. This machines produce the plastic products and is operated in many country and in many field. Therefore, this plastic materials are related to my work. And also, our company has the division which researches the biodegradable plastic materials in the laboratory. Of course, my work is not to improve the plastic materials but to design and develop the machines. However, we have to consider the influence of this plastic materials on our environment.