| Q. |
What are the Lip Balm Filling Trays made of? |
| A. |
The Lip Balm Filling Trays are made from high density polyethylene plastic or HDPE. This is the same plastic material that things like kitchen cutting boards are made from. It is the same material that most lip balm tubes are made from as well. |
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| Q. |
Are the Lip Balm Filling Trays durable? |
| A. |
They are very durable. Since they are made from HDPE, they are sturdy and will not react with the normal ingredients that are used in making lip balms, |
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| Q. |
Is it safe to wash my Lip Balm Filling Tray in the dishwasher? |
| A. |
We have washed trays in various dishwashers of our staff and testers without damage to either the trays or the dishwashers. If you have a dishwasher that has a known history of melting plastic on the bottom rack, then use only the top rack. |
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| Q. |
What do I use to scrape off the excess lip balm? |
| A. |
We recommend that you use a plastic putty knife in either a 4 inch width or a 2 inch width. A plastic putty knife can be found in most home improvement stores in either the paint or drywall sections. It should cost less than $2.00 US. |
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| Q. |
Can you make larger trays? |
| A. |
Well, yes we could, but we have found that working with multiple trays to be a better alternative. Our Lip Balm Filling trays will hold 50 tubes at a time. This is a nice working size for a small lip balm batch. If you want to make 200, 300 or more at a time, just use additional trays. With their small size, it is easy to manage your workspace and shuffle trays between workstations. It is very easy to have three stations. One station where you load the trays with lip balm tubes. Another station where you fill the tubes and scrape off the excess lip balm. The third station would be where you would remove the filled lip balm tubes from the trays and cap the tubes. |
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| Q. |
Why are your Lip Balm Filling Trays so inexpensive? |
| A. |
This comes down to two factors, machine time and operator time. If we were to machine mill each tray individually, we might be able to produce two trays per hour. While with injection molding we can produce 100+ per hour. Lower production costs equals lower product price. |
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| Q. |
What is the difference bewteen machine milled and injection molded? |
| A. |
Machine milled trays are made from solid sheets of HDPE. A drilling bit is moved from place to place to remove excess plastic. Unless the miller lives near a plastic recylcing program this shaved plastic is thrown into the trash. An injection molded tray is made from melted plastic which is injected around / into a metal mold. Excess plastic is just not a problem with this method since any scraps are just remelted and used again. This is true for misformed trays as well. If a machine making a milled tray goes askew then the entire tray is discarded. With milling, any flaws in the sheet plastic will cause excessive warping in the final tray. Remember, too, that milling causes stress relief in the plastic in isolated areas, not across the entire tray. With stress relief in some areas, but not others, the tray can: break, fracture or craze. With injection molding the stresses of sheet plastic are never a problem because the plastic is formed to the design desired, not the other way around. |
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| Q. |
Do you use machine milling as well as injection molding? |
| A. |
YES! We use milling machines to develop proto-types. Once a design is proven and the flaws are worked out, then we create the molds for a quality product. One last thought on milling vs. injection molding: the inital costs to machine mill a tray would be only 1/6th the cost of injection molding. So why injection mold? To produce a better product with greater consistency. |