Statistics released by the China Household Electrical Appliances Association show that at present, the amount of plastics in household appliances has accounted for 40% of the weight ratio, and the average use of household appliances such as color televisions and air conditioners is 1.5-2.5 kilograms per unit. Plastics have become the fastest growing materials in the field of home appliances, and the plasticization of products has become an important feature of the home appliances industry.

With the change of consumption concept in the Chinese market, more and more middle class are willing to choose high-end products, and the renewal cycle of home appliances is increasingly shortened. Household appliances are developing in the direction of comfort and beauty, health and environmental protection, shock absorption and noise reduction, human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence, so household appliances plastics and their processing technology will also develop in the direction of high-quality beauty, health and environmental protection, plastic instead of steel, easy processing, lightweight and intelligent manufacturing. So how can the innovation of plastic material application and processing technology keep up with the changing pace of the industry? What high-performance plastics and processes will be used in the home appliance market in the future?

From simple functionalization to high quality appearance requirements

With the continuous improvement of people's living standards, home appliances are not only functional products, but also gradually with "art characteristics". The colors of home appliances are no longer limited to black and white tones, but tend to be rich in color changes, arousing people's happy feelings of life; The shape design is more and more inclined to the dynamic curve, compared with the hard straight line, making people feel friendly, relaxed and warm. This requires that the plastic parts of household appliances have good appearance characteristics while having functionality.

The popular concept of "smart home" has not only promoted the development of innovative home appliances, but also raised the standards of their manufacturing materials. Take Casardi as an example, as a highly acclaimed high-end household appliance brand under Haier Group, Casardi has been looking for a high-quality innovative material for its high-end air conditioners to fully reflect the artistic texture and brand differentiation of Casardi. In the past, the Casati design team relied mainly on metals to meet performance and aesthetic requirements, but metals such as aluminum often require a combination of complex surface treatment processes such as sandblasting, wire drawing and anodizing, and from an innovation perspective, traditional materials such as metals have become increasingly difficult to push the limits. The perfect solution for Casati was the continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic composite (CFRTP) developed by Covestro Polymers (China) Co., LTD. This future-oriented composite is made of continuous carbon or glass fiber combined with polycarbonate. From the beginning, CFRTP can form a natural one-way texture without the need for complex processing. CFRTP makes the air conditioner show a high-grade metal texture, and the appearance is stylish and beautiful. In March 2018, Casardi launched the Cullinan air conditioner with the latest "zonal air supply" technology, which is designed with two independent air supply systems, the whole panel is made of Covestro CFRTP, and the unique high-end texture of carbon fiber fully demonstrates the elegant artistic appearance and excellence of the Casardi brand.

It is understood that CFRTP based on thermoplastics can use existing thermoforming equipment for hot pressing treatment, with high production efficiency, short production cycle and other advantages. They can be used in combination with a variety of coatings and decorative processes to create unique surfaces, logos and other signature details, and can easily be laser etched directly into the mold. Often, composites are considered too expensive and difficult to process, but Covestro's CFRTP material is a game changer, opening up new and exciting design possibilities and user experiences as a modern, cost-effective and easily formed thermoplastic composite.

As home appliance companies pay more and more attention to product design, CMF is no longer a new word in the home appliance industry. Home appliance enterprises to enhance product competitiveness in addition to increasing technology research and development, but also to increase CMF - Color, Material and Finishing design innovation. Products with fashionable appearance, novel shape and brilliant colors are more easily accepted by the public. The use of environmentally friendly materials can not only decorate the appearance of the product, but also increase the easy-to-clean, antibacterial and mildew prevention functions, through special treatment can make home appliances have better light aging resistance and scratch resistance, and make the product show a stronger sense of texture and texture. CMF can not only optimize product design, but also promote brand marketing and enhance product experience, helping home appliances to stand out in the fierce market competition.

Consumption upgrading has led to increased demand for health and environmental protection

With the enhancement of consumers' awareness of health consumption, clean and antibacterial household appliances are becoming increasingly popular, and home appliance manufacturers also put forward higher requirements for the antibacterial and bactericidal properties of plastics. It is reported that more and more enterprises have used antibacterial plastics in air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, water dispensers, rice cookers and air purifiers to reduce microbial contamination and bacterial cross infection.

The technical core of the development of antibacterial plastics is the addition of antibacterial agents to plastics. Most of the plastic appearance parts of traditional home appliances with beautiful colors and patterns are sprayed with paint, which leads to a large amount of VOC(volatile organic compounds) emissions, which is a great harm to the environment, front-line production employees and consumers. With the increasingly strict national environmental protection policies and the continuous upgrading of consumer demand for product appearance, the demand for environmentally friendly and beautiful plastics for home appliances is more urgent. "Internal repair environmental protection, external repair appearance level" free spray plastic has become a highlight. The material is a one-time molding plastic by injection molding and extrusion, which can well solve the flow marks and welding problems encountered in the plastic molding process, and greatly improve the appearance and texture of plastic products. It has the advantages of one-time spray free, beautiful, environmental protection and low cost, and it can bring creative appearance effects that can not be achieved by spraying. Such as imitation metal, imitation glass, imitation marble and other effects. At present, almost all large domestic material modification enterprises are researching and producing and selling this kind of non-spraying plastic, and it has been successfully applied to air conditioners, washing machines, small household appliances and other products. At present, the first-line home appliance enterprises have begun to use metal color, pearlescent color, gradual color-free spraying plastic to replace the high-cost, high-pollution spraying process.

On the other hand, home appliances "furniture", that is, home appliances are gradually integrated with the decoration style of the house, which makes home appliances integrated with furniture color design more favored by consumers, and free spraying plastic is also a good choice. Some domestic modified material companies cooperate with industrial design companies to provide color pattern customization services for home appliance companies, and also provide metal texture, flow pattern effect, luminous effect and other no-spray plastics to help home appliances achieve "furniture".

Solve the problem of "high appearance level" and lightweight with technology

How to help home appliances achieve "high appearance level" and lightweight needs at the same time has been a big problem in this industry. Many injection molding solution suppliers have given a positive response, such as Guangdong Yizhi launched the original micro-foaming technology based on MuCell - FoamPro process last year. On the one hand, the FoamPro process can achieve lightweight, 20% weight reduction compared with the traditional injection molding process, the molding cycle is significantly shortened by 30%, the production efficiency is greatly improved, the mold locking force is reduced by 50%, the warping, shrinkage and other problems are eliminated, and the high-quality appearance of products can be produced for the home appliances and other industries, including highlights, matte, leather grain, fiber weaving and particle effect. No need to hold pressure, good thermal insulation. On the other hand, FoamPro micro-foaming process innovation combines a number of "black technology" : SmartClamp intelligent clamping system of two-plate injection molding machine, aviation grade aluminum alloy mold technology, ATT mold temperature control technology, FLEXflow servo needle valve hot flow system, breaking through the process bottleneck of micro-foaming.

Automation and intelligent manufacturing help industrial transformation and upgrading

Rising labor costs, increasing difficulties in the management of the younger generation of industrial workers, and the "labor shortage" every year have forced enterprises to seek changes, and factory automation is bound to be a good solution for the home appliance manufacturing industry. In addition, with the gradual decline in the cost of automation equipment, as well as the continuous expansion of the downstream application field of robots, now, to high-end, intelligent transformation and upgrading has become the consensus of the entire home appliance industry chain, Haier, Midea, Skyworth, Galanz, Gree, Hisense and other home appliance companies are using a large number of automation equipment or robots. Have to seek workshop unmanned automated production, equipment interconnection and visualization and other "intelligent" upgrade solutions to improve the production and operation efficiency of home appliance enterprises and production and manufacturing quality.

Now, in the face of the pressure of declining profits, plastic parts processing and production enterprises located in the upstream of the household appliance industry chain have requirements for molding equipment involving many aspects: both energy saving and emission reduction, but also automation, in order to save hands and production time, reduce production costs, and make products more competitive in the market. Hongda currently uses five injection molding machines provided by a well-known injection molding machine brand to produce different vacuum cleaner parts. The person in charge of Grand said that the reason for choosing the injection molding machine series of the home, in addition to the machine is very energy-saving, but also help themselves to further automation. In fact, the hydraulic injection molding machine produced by the injection molding machine manufacturer mentioned above is very suitable for conventional applications of mass production, which does not require special technology, but can effectively improve the quality and process, and the parts produced do not need follow-up processing, saving time and manpower.

The transformation and upgrading of plastic parts manufacturing, a labor-intensive industry, is imminent, but some injection molding companies have a certain deviation in the understanding of intelligent manufacturing, that access to ERP systems, or monitoring injection molding machines, and even add a few manipulators, automatic belt lines, etc., can achieve intelligent manufacturing. In fact, only when people, machines, materials, products and data distribution are fully connected, can the foundation of intelligent manufacturing be laid.