Your Extrusion Project, From Beginning To End

At UPC, we take pride in working with our customers to turn their concepts into reality. From an idea to a finished customized product, we are there for you. From the beginning, to the end of the production process, our in-house capability means you have a single point of contact - you get the right advice at the start of the project and a finished product that we both can be proud of.

1. Contact UPC With Your Idea

Send us your requirements with our Inquiry Form or talk to us directly. Our experienced team can help guide you in defining your requirements and deliverables in an efficient manner. Since approximately 65% of all plastics pass though an extruder, no idea is a bad idea and you might be amazed at what you can do with plastic.

2. Custom Design And Engineering

Understanding the end-use requirements is a key step for our Custom Design and Engineering teams. They will consult personally with you to select the best materials, define the profile and develop the production process that will meet your quality objectives with due consideration for minimizing cost. We will ensure you approve of the design before any work begins.

3. Creation Of The Tooling

Once your extrusion profile is designed, our in-house tool shop will design the tooling to match the required process using CAD modeling techniques.

We use only high quality stainless steel in all UPC extrusion dies. This ensures quality, consistency and accuracy.

If required, downstream tooling such as vacuum calibrators, cutting blocks or other fixtures will be designed by our engineers and built by our own machine shop. Depending on your product requirements, these tools may be fabricated in a variety of materials and often are coated (Teflon, anodizing, chrome plating, etc.) for longevity, anti-friction characteristics.

4. Finalizing The Die

Achieving a consistent quality extrusion is a combination of many factors but none as important as the die itself. The value of our in-house team is that our engineering, tooling and production staff can work closely together to ensure that the die is flowed in properly*, polished and ready for production, avoiding delays and costly scrap.

*’Flowed in properly’, refers to the process of ensuring that the die is capable of producing the specified profile and absent of hidden voids or irregularities.

5. Customize The Line

With the initial design, engineering and die development complete, UPC can optimize the extrusion process for one of our 7 main extruders. This includes selecting the best screw for the type of material that is to be run. If additional processing is required, such as specialized cutting, punching, notching, printing or tape applications, the most suitable downstream equipment will be chosen from our large inventory or we will design and build whatever is needed, in-house.

6. Extrude The Material

The specified raw material is placed into the extruder hopper and when the extruder and die are heated to the required temperature, the extruder drive is started and the raw material is conveyed and melted in the extruder barrel. It is then forced out through the orifices in the die, producing the intended profile. While the process sounds simple, it is the collective experience of the UPC team that ensures the quality and consistency of the extruded shape.

7. Form the Profile

Immediately after leaving the extrusion die, the material will pass through cooling, shaping or sizing equipment. While all extrusion suppliers perform this step, UPC’s experience ensures the profile is handled in a manner that consistently maintains the integrity of the extrusion to meet your specifications and production demands.

8. Profile Processing

Depending upon the product and the customer specification, the extrusion often requires some form of post extrusion processing, such as:

vacuum sizing (during the extrusion process)
cutting to specified or a shipping length
punching
part / batch number labeling
notching
slitting
printing
taping
cutting to a specified length, for either convenient shipping or finished product length

9. Quality Checks

Once the profile is processed, we ensure its conformance to the established quality requirements of the project. As an ISO 9001:2008 registered facility, we maintain complete records of all critical dimensional, visual checks and batch numbers and retain reference samples of every run. These checks are repeated as required according to our established quality plan, to ensure consistent and repeatable results in your products.

10. Packaging

Once the extruded product has passed all of its quality requirements, we complete its packaging according to your instructions. A label is affixed to the package giving all of the pertinent information such as part number, colour, number of pieces, customer, date, etc. The product is then moved to our warehouse in preparation for shipping.