Injection molding produces many of the mass-produced, inexpensive items you use daily. As technology advances, the process continues to be used for more complex parts.
A plastic injection-molded part’s tooling costs up to 70% of its total manufacturing costs. Proper design steps to minimize this cost make your project more economical.
Precision
Injection molding uses a high-pressure plastic injection to create custom parts and products with precise measurements, shapes, and sizes. The process is highly efficient, allowing manufacturers to produce large quantities of high-quality plastic products relatively quickly.
To minimize production risks, injection mold makers must pay close attention to quality control processes. This ensures the precision of the injection molds and helps manufacturers deliver high-quality, defect-free plastic components to customers.
The injection mold design is essential to manufacturing efficiencies, as it can determine up to 70% of the final product costs. This is where DFM (design for manufacture) comes into play, as it helps engineers reduce overall costs by designing a product with optimal machining efficiencies. This can be done through various techniques, including CAD modeling, prototyping, and tooling.
Flexibility
Injection molding allows manufacturers to choose from a wide variety of raw plastics. These materials offer impressive mechanical properties, such as tolerances, high temperatures, and tensile strength rivaling metal parts.
An experienced injection mold builder can use a single injection mold to produce several items with minimal variances. This is especially important for medical devices, where precision production is necessary to mitigate potential health hazards and ensure the device works as intended.
3D-printed molds can also help manufacturers create prototypes for product testing and development. Compared to machining metal, this method is more cost-effective and requires less labor, saving time and money on the manufacturing front.
Injection mold builders can also create free-standing molds to work with any standard injection machine sized for the mold. However, these types of molds require professional design to ensure they function correctly. This includes ensuring that critical dimensions are met and that the plastics don’t have large undercuts.
Durability
Injection molding is an efficient manufacturing process that provides cost-saving advantages due to its high production rates and focus on repeatability. Whether a product is meant for medical use or consumer applications, accurate and consistent production ensures that each device functions as designed.
The performance of a plastic component is significantly influenced by the thermoplastic used to make it. Manufacturers should carefully consider the material’s strengths and functionalities to choose the right option for each project. Additionally, they should ensure that the selected plastic complies with industry standards and FDA regulations.
The number of cavities incorporated into an injection mold directly affects its initial manufacturing costs. Limiting the number of holes decreases the initial cost and also increases production rates. Alternatively, multi-cavity injection molds allow for the production of multiple parts in one injection cycle, saving time and money. The quality of the materials incorporated into an injection mold also impacts its final production costs.
Customization
Injection molding requires a high level of precision. The molds that house the molten plastic must be designed to mirror the desired product features closely. The molds are fabricated by a mold maker from metal, usually tool steel or aluminum, and precision-machined to meet the required tolerances.
The performance of a plastic component is significantly influenced by the thermoplastic used to make it. The cost, time, specialized equipment, and skilled labor make injection molding a poor choice for small-part production.
However, injection mold builders are experimenting with desktop 3D printing to produce plastic injection molds faster and cost-effectively. This method reduces cost and fabrication time and allows manufacturers to quickly build functional prototypes for testing or short runs of end-use products. Combining this new technology with traditional injection molding can reduce part production time and speed up product development. The result is a more efficient manufacturing process that may increase profits and revenue.