Look at the tub of margarine, the paint bucket, or the yogurt cup in front of you. There's a good chance its decoration wasn't printed on or stuck on — it was molded in. And the invisible force that made it possible is controlled static electricity from Simco-Ion.

What is In-Mold Labeling (IML)?
Instead of printing directly onto a container or applying an adhesive label afterward, a pre-printed plastic label is placed inside the mold before the plastic is formed. The molten plastic fuses with the label, and the product emerges fully decorated in a single step. IML is now becoming the standard across injection molding, blow molding, and thermoforming.

How it works — where Simco-Ion comes in
The challenge is to hold a thin label in the exact position within a fast-moving mold. Static charge solves it elegantly:

→ A robot picks a pre-printed PP label onto a dummy core and carries it at high speed into the mold cavity.
→ At the moment it reaches position, the label is electrostatically charged by a Simco-Ion generator (such as the CM-Lite or the end-of-arm CM Micro Easy) feeding charging electrodes — the "spider pins" — built into the core.
→ The charged label instantly jumps to the grounded mold wall and clings there, perfectly placed.
→ The robot retracts, the mold closes, plastic is injected, and the container ejects as one integrated, decorated, fully recyclable unit.

Why Simco-Ion is the reference in IML
As the leading manufacturer of dedicated IML charging equipment, Simco-Ion brings advantages that directly protect your cycle time and reject rate:

→ CM Micro Easy (CMME): a 480-gram, 24V DC generator that mounts right on the robot arm and shrugs off the high G-forces of the process. Its patented Cycle-OK feature signals when the label has accumulated enough charge — and again when the charge has dropped to a safe level to withdraw the core — eliminating trial-and-error setup for every new label or product.
→ IML Spider: a single block with 8 resistor-protected output ports feeding up to 8 flexible electrodes, daisy-chainable for multi-cavity molds — resistors on every port prevent accidental spark-over.
→ Current-control charging that automatically compensates for contamination and emitter-pin wear, keeping placement stable over long runs.
→ IML EasyCore resin and rugged flexible high-voltage cables engineered specifically for robotic cable chains.

The advantages that reach the bottom line
Compared with vacuum-based label holding, electrostatic IML makes mold construction simpler and cheaper — no vacuum channels to machine, and no production stoppages to clean them. The result is higher output and more competitive parts. And because the label is the same polymer family as the container, the finished product is durable, photo-quality, 360°-decorated, and fully recyclable as a mono-material.

One label. One shot. One finished product.

MIDTEC helps molders across the region specify the right Simco-Ion IML generator, electrode, and core setup for their line.