In our day-to-day lives, we frequently take advantage of tiny, tiny things. Tiny things like the phone in your pocket, the computer on your desk, the pen and its tiny parts waiting in your pocket for its moment to be used. But it goes much deeper than that. There are tiny things you frequently benefit from without even knowing. Many times they’re plastic, and similarly – many times they are the result of the longstanding and constantly evolving process of plastic extrusion.
Extrusion is a mass manufacturing process where plastics are first melted and then formed into a single shape, known as the “profile”. Every day, we use plastic extrusions in ways we never even realize. For instance, there’s the weather striping on your house, thermoplastic coatings on electronics you use, insulation for wires, plastic tubing, and more. Without plastic extrusion technology, the wires that give power to your appliances or carry information would be hardly capable of the power and performance you expect. You might also consider all of the plastic components you encounter at the hospital. Without plastic extrusion, the plastic tubing responsible for carrying medicine and vital fluids to patients at the hospital wouldn’t be possible.
When it comes to typical everyday products, it isn’t exactly common for a single type of product to have far reaching importance in multiple industries. Typically, things have their place. But this isn’t quite the case with extrusions. When you think about groundbreaking products or technologies, you probably think of things like the smart phone, laptop, or pace-maker, and you wouldn’t be wrong – they are all revolutionary in the way they’ve changed our lives and our society. However, it is very clear that these things have changed the world, it’s obvious, and their impact is very noticeable. It is interesting, then, to consider the groundbreaking and revolutionary products that make a difference without anyone noticing. Much more common than you might think is the reality that life-changing products like plastic extrusions exist without the general public even realizing. They are unheard of and hardly acknowledged, constantly operating behind the scenes. Then again, despite their “behind-the-scenes” nature, the world would be a very different place if plastic extrusions didn’t exist.
If you look around the room now, you could possibly see plenty of extruded items, or – items that directly benefit from plastic extrusion. Chances are, many of them are the products and tools you use every day. Now think about where you might be, what you might be doing, and how your life might be different if all of these items didn’t benefit from plastic extrusion. Maybe they wouldn’t exist at all, such as in the case of medical tubing, or maybe they would make other products much less effective, such as in the case of wire insulation.