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Practical Magic: Conjuring Sustainability and Style
Sprinkle the magic of color and special effects over sustainable design and, presto, you’ve got style. John Skabardonis, Manager, Fantasia® Color Technologies confirms that the coolness factor is alive and well in sustainable products that use plastics. Through live demonstrations and amazing product application images, John shows designers how to choose materials responsibly and bring design fantasies to life at the same time. This tour of advanced technologies reveals creative opportunities for sustainable design before, during and after a plastic part is molded.
The magic begins with a look at compounded color technology, an eco-friendly process that allows designers enormous creative control over the extraordinary effects they can achieve by putting additives and colorants into bulk resin before it becomes a plastic part. John provides a torrent of dazzling examples to underscore the options.
John also demonstrates the flexibility and sustainable features of film insert molding, a technology that incorporates decorated film as the surface layer of a plastic part during the molding operation. From three-dimensional dead front displays that come alive with illumination through bright metallic finishes, coatings and fibergraphics that produce fabric, soft-touch and other tactile effects — virtually anything goes with FIM technology; and all of it contributes to sustainable design.
The last stop on the whirlwind tour is AURA® Infusion Technology. This process is a home run for sustainability and a wonderland of inspiration for designs that call for coloring parts after they are molded. John summons a parade of possibilities that morph from one color to the next, mask to achieve sharp changes between colors and generate subtle color gradients in plastic parts, which is no mean feat.
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