Our industrial partner in this project was interested in marketing
a weight set of dumbbells with plastic casings. The
company cooperated with the Industrial Materials Institute
(IMI) of the National Research Council (Montreal, Canada) to
optimise the design of the dumbbells (Fig. 1). During the study,
trial parts were manufactured at the Industrial Materials Institute
on a Placo 3D XY blow moulding machine. High-density
polyethylene (HDPE), blow moulding grade (P ´ etromont 6200),
was used to produce the parts.Atargetweight of 175±10 g and
a uniform thickness of approximately 0.13cm were chosen as
target parameters for the plastic dumbbell.