ABSTRACT
The polymer processing industry creates at least 30% of the objects that we see around us. There is a good chance that these objects were fabricated using one of the following three manufacturing processes: extrusion, injection molding or compression molding. They are all high-volume production processes. Extrusion is a continuous process, injection molding is an automated process and compression molding is a semiautomated process but can manufacture large and complex parts that cannot be easily accomplished by injection molding or extrusion. Most of the components fabricated are for nonstructural applications as the polymer structure can withstand only a limited amount of load and stress.
