Month: November 2016

How Products are Made: Acrylic Plastic

How Products are Made: Acrylic Plastic

As a plastic injection molding company, Plastics are very important to us here at Quality Mold Shop. Here we have an article overviewing where acrylic plastics come from and what they are used for.

Like all plastics, acrylic plastics are polymers. The word polymer comes from the Greek words poly, meaning many, and meros, meaning a part. A polymer, therefore, is a material made up of many molecules, or parts, linked together like a chain. Polymers may have hundreds, or even thousands, of molecules linked together.
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How to Pick a Plastic Injection Molding Company

How to Pick a Plastic Injection Molding Company

Plastic injection molding is a booming industry, but picking a mold making company for your business to work with is a key factor if you want to mold high quality parts. You should choose your mold manufacturer carefully. Opting for the cheapest manufacturer can end up costing you more. If a mold manufacturer delivers a mold that doesn’t live up to your expectations, fixing it will significantly hike up its cost. Eventually, a mold you thought would be cheap may end up costing more than even the most expensive mold. The worst part is that it probably won’t ever perform at the same level.

To avoid an injection mold catastrophe, you have to pick the right manufacturer to make your mold. There are a few things to consider when partnering with an injection mold manufacturer.

American-made Molds Are Best

China is known for producing large quantities of molds that are available at reasonably low costs. But there are many reasons why an American-made mold will be best for your business. One of the advantages of choosing an American mold manufacturer is that your mold won’t have to be shipped abroad for maintenance. This not only saves you money on postage, but also means your mold won’t be away for long periods of time whenever it’s being serviced.

The other benefit of American plastic injection molds is that they’re usually of a higher quality. Although a Chinese mold maker could deliver a high quality mold, you never really know what you’re going to get until your mold arrives in America. And when your mold manufacturer is in China, sending your new mold back for repairs could take many weeks.

At Quality Mold Shop, we offer pickup and delivery services for molds weighing 12,000lbs or less, meaning you won’t have to worry about mold transportation.

Precision and Injection Mold Making

Your needs will have a huge influence on the mold manufacturer you choose. If you don’t need precision molds that are accurate to a fraction of a millimeter, then almost any manufacturer will be able to help you. But the more precision you need from your injection mold, the more you should shop around for a good manufacturer.

Ask your manufacturer about their mold making processes and the precision of their molds. For the best results, you should communicate your needs clearly to help the manufacturer understand whether or not they can deliver a mold that’ll suit your requirements.

Remember, you don’t have to go with a mold making company that can deliver precision to a fraction of a millimeter if that’s not what you need. Although this precision could indicate better manufacturing processes are used during production.

Mold Manufacturer Production Scale

Don’t just assume that large scale mold manufacturers are the best. Different injection mold manufacturers target different customers. Often times, really large scale manufacturers prefer to work with larger businesses that place large orders. If that’s the case, your order won’t necessarily be prioritized above larger ones. This could depend from one manufacturer to another, the best manufacturers will prioritize all their customers regardless of how many molds they order.

Aim for a mold manufacturer with a production scale that matches your business. You need one that can keep up, but that doesn’t have to be the largest manufacturer around.

Some people might be concerned that smaller manufacturers aren’t as good, though. But the production scale your mold manufacturer can take on isn’t an indicator of how good the molds will be. Sometimes, companies that make fewer molds can do better quality control and produce very high quality molds. The quality of molds an injection mold making company produces will depend on the expertise of the staff and machining tools, not on their production capacity.

Trustworthiness in the Production Process

You should aim to find out more about the production processes of every mold making company you’re considering to work with. Learn more about how long it takes to make a single mold and what steps every mold goes through before it’s ready for use.

Once you have a proper estimate of how long it takes to make a good mold, you’ll know if your mold isn’t delivered within a reasonable time. In that case, you can ask about what caused the delay. But remember that not all molds are the same. Some molds need much more work before they can be used than others, and if you’re working with a good company, you shouldn’t have to worry much about the production of your mold. It’s better to wait a little longer if you’ll get a higher quality mold.

Furthermore, your mold manufacturer should be trustworthy enough so you don’t have to constantly check in to see if your mold is being made properly. If possible, you should do some research to find out whether or not past customers have been satisfied with the company. You should learn more about how well the molds a company makes perform and whether or not the company will deliver as promised. A good company makes durable molds that perform well.

Experience in Mold Making

Experience is a good indicator of how reliable a plastic injection mold making company will be. At Quality Mold Shop, we have more than 40 years’ experience in producing high quality, precision molds. We also offer services to design molds as well as helping customers with injection mold maintenance plans and repairs.

Our team of experts have designed and produced molds for the automotive, medical and appliance industries. If you need a durable mold and reliable customer support, Quality Mold Shop is the ideal partner for your business to work with.

How Products are made: CNC Machine Tool

How Products are made: CNC Machine Tool

We use CNC Machines a lot here at Quality Mold Shop. Read over this article to see what they are for and how they came to be!

CNC or “computer numerical controlled” machines are sophisticated metalworking tools that can create complicated parts required by modern technology. Growing rapidly with the advances in computers, CNCs can be found performing work as lathes, milling machines, laser cutters, abrasive jet cutters, punch presses, press brakes, and other industrial tools.
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How are automotive plastics manufactured?

How are automotive plastics manufactured?

Would you drive a car made out of plastic?Well, there’s a good chance you already do; that is, if you drive at all. That’s because today’s cars are an average of about 300 pounds, or approximately 8 percent, of plastic by weight

Versatile plastics inspire countless innovations that help make life better, healthier and safer every day. For example, plastics make possible bicycle helmets and child safety seats. They’re in the airbags that protect us and the cell phones that connect us. And plastics help keep the foods we eat and serve our families safer and fresher than ever before.
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Designing for Manufacturing: Accuracy, Precision and Tolerance

Designing for Manufacturing: Accuracy, Precision and Tolerance

With design projects and CAD programming now the default apparatuses for drawing product ideas, there is the threat of trusting that anything that can be designed can simply be made. Nonetheless, while exchanging a drawing from the ideal universe of the PC to the practical universe of the machine shop, certain fundamental contemplations apply that ought to give the designer pause. Knowing how to design an item for fabrication requires the comprehension of three key ideas: Accuracy, Precision and Tolerance.

Accuracy

Level of adjustment to a known standard or esteem.

The standard for physical measurements is the meter, and its esteem is a widespread one in light of the separation that a light emission goes in a specific settled timeframe. Along these lines, precision is how much an estimation or development in space fits in with this known standard or one of its subordinates (regularly the millimeter or micron for metric estimations.)

In this way, when a machine apparatus is touted as being exceptionally precise, it implies that when the software engineer educates the machine to cut a bit of metal 40mm long, then the machine really does that. The more precise it is, the nearer it gets to precisely 40mm, with no blunder. There are numerous different variables required in getting precisely the 40mm cut that you’re searching for, yet simply recollect that we begin with a known esteem and exactness portrays how shut the machine gets to that esteem.

Precision

Repeatability of an estimation without producing irregular mistakes.

Precision is the capacity of our machine instruments to rehash this 40mm cut, again and again, with no presented or irregular mistake. Exact machining, or exact workmanship, is a demonstration of controlling the procedure and not going amiss – paying little respect to whatever the estimation or process might be. This is regularly mistaken for exactness and to be sure the two terms are coolly utilized to some degree reciprocally however precision alludes more to repeatability.

In our feeling of precision, it likewise applies to the performance of the task, such as taking a cautious estimation or honing a cutter head or some other occupation in a machine shop whose performance eventually impacts the nature of the completed item.

Tolerance

Reasonable or unsurprising deviation from a standard.

Each designer realizes that there is no such thing as ensured 100% exactness. There is just a settled upon standard. All machine instruments will have a level of free play or vibration in them – they should, or else they would be solidified, inactive pieces. The tolerance in this way indicates the deviation far from a referred to esteem, communicated as a “+/ – ” number. Along these lines, in the event that we have a machine instrument that claims a tolerance of “+/ – 1 mm”, this implies the apparatus will possibly present a deviation of one millimeter with each cut or pass. Could be an additional millimeter, or too short by a millimeter or some portion thereof.

This would be considered to a great degree poor performance, and no respectable machine instrument is that messy. Taken together, this implies exact instruments approach the standard, exact apparatuses are dependably precise again and again, and tolerances are controlled to inside a little, satisfactory level of changeability.

How does this influence Designing for Manufacturing?

As mentioned above, modern CAD programs are capable of generating 3D renders which are highly accurate, maybe too accurate. You will need to consider the following when designing your product:

  • The accuracy and precision of the tools being used to make the product. In other words, what is the capability of the factory where your product is to be made? It’s good to know this in advance.
  • The natural movement of the raw materials (metal and plastic of different types) in response to environmental conditions (temperature and humidity) and mechanical stress.
  • Necessary allowance for movement. Draft angles are applied to parts which must be removed from a tooling mold, to make space for clearance without damaging the part. Other clearances must be allowed for pieces that have mechanical fittings: screws, axles, gears, etc.
  • Kerf is the amount of material removed in the process of cutting. The computer model may not account for this lost material but the machinist must.
  • More accurate is not necessarily better. Higher degrees of accuracy and precision require more effort, time and money for diminishing returns. Pursuing extreme accuracy in one feature of a design may compromise accuracy in another area. Many part features may need some free space to allow movement or room for thermal expansion/contraction between mating pieces of an assembly.

How Plastics Work

How Plastics Work

Ever wonder where plastics come from or how they are made? This article covers those things exactly. Find out what goes into making plastic before it can be used to make your part.

They must start with various raw materials that make up the monomers. Ethylene and propylene, for example, come from crude oil, which contains the hydrocarbons that make up the monomers. The hydrocarbon raw materials are obtained from the “cracking process” used in refining oil and natural gas.
Read how plastics are made here.

Make Your Own Injection Molding Machine

Make Your Own Injection Molding Machine

Take a look at this guy’s homemade plastic injection mold machine.

I wanted to make solid plastic parts for some of my amateur science experiments. There are a number of ways to make things out of plastic, each with its advantages and disadvantages. Often just cutting raw material to the desired shape works best. Some plastics can be cast by pouring a liquid resin with hardener into a mold
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