Extrusion Dies for Plastics and Rubber: Design and Engineering Computations

Rating:
Summary: Informative Introduction
Review: This book helps explain a lot of the basics of how extrusion dies are optimized for superior cooling and flow performance. It gets into a good level of detail but is not written with too high a required knowledge going into the book. It is useful for any entry level engineer or tool designer in understanding more about the process. I purchased this as I work in the plastics industry and desired to get a more in depth mathematical understanding in order to solve some real extrusion problems, such as warping during cool.
The book starts with basics of material properties and how they interact with extrusion. It then goes into basic flow equations, not much more than you probably got in college, but then expands it to topics such as Melt Fracture. Then it goes into the CFD, or flow field, part when they talk about optimizing shape of the die to improve the velocity profile.
The meat of this book is in its discussion of various die designs for monoextrusion and coextrusion of thermoplastics and elastomers. There is then a short 10 page section on heating of the die.
The ending is on basics of calibration, operation, mechanical design, and maintaining of dies.