Underwriters Laboratories (UL) is a 128-year-old company and is probably best known for their certification of the electrical safety of an appliance. If you have plugged in an appliance, you have probably seen this mark! UL has now become UL Solutions. UL Solutions delivers testing, inspection, and certification services for an array of customers and products.
UL Solutions offers verification of marketing claims. This verification can help a company to stand apart from their competitors and provide a confidence and credibility to their offering. A UL marketing claim validation could be the key to a customer selecting one solution over the other.
Sustainability Solutions
Machine manufacturers, molders, brand owners and are all looking for sustainability solutions when it comes to injection molding parts and components. There are various offerings available but when browsing these offerings there is no way to know what sort of results can be verified prior to purchase.
Knowing that there are an array of features/options on the market, iMFLUX sought to set themselves apart by seeking a third-party validation.
Creating the Test Plan
Given the history and credibility of an organization like UL solutions, it was an obvious choice for iMFLUX when they were looking to validate their marketing claims related to sustainability.
The process was rigorous to establish the language for the claim. Including three sustainability benefits into one succinct statement was no small feat. Following the establishment of the claim language it was time to set up an experiment to prove the language was valid. UL Solutions has experts in various fields who review these experimental plans and then do witness verification of the experiment.
The experiment was set up to be completed in one day at the iMFLUX facility in Hamilton, OH. From start to finish the experiment lasted about 5 hours and required three iMFLUX personnel as well as the UL Witness Expert.
Validation Success
Upon completion of the experiment and the collection of all relevant data, the UL Witness Expert created a report detailing the work. This report was reviewed by additional UL experts to ensure valid scientific thinking.
UL Solutions validated iMFLUX delivers up to 15% energy savings, up to 4% part weight reduction and automatically adapts to ±52% MFI material shift.
Three Distinct Advantages
As there are many aspects to consider when thinking about sustainability in injection molding, the ability to offer three simultaneous advantages and have that verified by UL Solutions is a game-changer for iMFLUX. Each verified advantage can benefit all aspects of the value chain.
An energy savings is key for the molder as this saves them instantly on their electric bill. Any energy savings will contribute to a lower carbon footprint and reduce emissions. This type of energy savings can also be claimed by the machine maker and brand owner when they are calculating Scope 3 emissions.
Light weighting plastic components provides an immediate savings when it comes to resin consumption. Less plastic, without loss of function of the product is good news for everyone. Less material needed for producing the part, lower cost in transporting the part and less plastic in the world is a win-win-win.
Finally, given the need to produce more products with recycled material there is a need for flexibility in the production process. Conventional molding processes rely on virgin materials reducing variation for the molder, as they could expect the same behavior from the resin day in and day out. With recycled plastics, the vast array of items being recycled results in some variability in the viscosity of the recycled resin.
This variability can cause headaches for operators as they will need to be at the machine and make constant adjustments. With iMFLUX, the molding machine will now be able to automatically adjust to viscosity variation in real time and alleviate the need for operator intervention. This makes the inclusion of recycled material a more efficient reality for molder and brand owner!
Learn more about the UL Marketing Claim Validation of iMFLUX.