Tag: Plastic Injection Mold Making

How to Design the Perfect Plastic Part

Used to deliver top notch exactness parts everywhere volumes and low costs, plastic injection molding offers adaptable answers for a scope of uses.

While this procedure offers a few one of a kind advantages over other generation forms, the achievement of an injection shaped part relies on upon its mold; with the correct outline, durable, quality plastic parts can be made reliably and effectively. Poor outline can prompt to expensive and tedious preparing botches.

With a specific end goal to advance the viability of high-volume injection molding and boost the exactness and nature of your parts, a few key plan components ought to be considered before proceeding onward to creation.

Divider Thickness

You can reduce — and even eliminate — most injection molding part defects by taking the time to lay out a smart wall-thickness design. The key is to ensure that the thicknesses of all walls are as uniform as possible, as molten plastic will seek out the path of least resistance (in this scenario, larger wall areas), leaving smaller wall areas potentially unfilled.

Rib Design

Ribs are utilized to fortify the quality of a high-volume injection molded part. Ribs ought not surpass 70% of your parts divider thickness, be that as it may, nor should they fall under half of divider thickness; both situations can bring about soaking in the surface of your part. Additionally, make sure to give careful consideration to the tallness of the ribs, their area, and their level of draft for simplicity of discharge.

Boss Design

Bosses are part features serving as one component of a larger product that requires assembly. During assembly, bosses can serve as anchor locations for screws, pins, or other fasteners. These components have width and height recommendations similar to those of ribs. Pairing bosses and ribs, especially in corners, can strengthen your part and significantly reduce chances of sinking.

Corner Transitions

In high-volume plastic injection molding, parts with outrageous or unexpected geometric elements can be inclined to defects — liquid plastic streams in the easiest course of action, and brutal points can obstruct that development. At whatever point conceivable, all corners and divider creases ought to be bended, with coordinating inside and outside spans. Smooth corner moves take into consideration better plastic stream.

Weld Lines

Weld lines — otherwise called weave or merge lines — happen when two plastic streams, or two areas of a solitary stream, meet. They happen most ordinarily around gaps or different hindrances, with the plastic stream isolating to pass them and afterward returning together a short time later. Each plastic infusion formed part has weld lines: the objective is to plan your part so weld lines happen in areas that don’t trade off your part’s quality or respectability.

Gate and Vent Placement

The gate of a large-volume injection mold is the point at which molten plastic exits the mold’s runner and enters the part cavity. Both the type of gate you choose and where you choose to place it can substantially impact your part’s quality. Vents, which allow air to escape from the mold as plastic rushes in, are similarly important; when positioned properly, vents can help minimize weld lines.

Plastic Injection Molding for Automobiles

Plastic Injection Molding for Automobiles

Plastic injection mold makers have developed technologies for producing quality parts over the years. With so many thing that are made from plastic nowadays, it’s hard to believe there was a time it didn’t exits. Plastic injection molding is used a wide variety of things. Everything from children’s toys to medical equipment and household items are made using plastic injection molding techniques. What many people don’t realize is just how much plastic injection molding has developed.

Plastic Injection Molding in the Automotive Industry

In the automotive industry, plastic injection molds are used to make a surprising amount of vehicle parts. The interior of most cars are filled with plastic. The dashboard, inside door panels, ashtrays, buttons and even the carpets and bumpers are all made through plastic injection molding processes. But even when you take a look under the engine cap, you’ll see a good deal of plastic molded parts.

In recent years the use of plastic has become especially popular in the automobile industry. And this shift from using metal components to plastic is about more than just saving on production costs.

Car manufacturers constantly strive to design vehicles that are lightweight. These lightweight vehicles have been proven to be environmentally friendlier because of their lower fuel consumption. It’s been estimated that every 10% reduction in vehicle weight can lead to a 5-7% increase in fuel efficiency.

In order to make vehicles more efficient, the automotive industry is trying to revolutionize the way plastics are used in cars, aiming to make as many car parts as possible from durable, lightweight plastics. Even though an average modern car consists 50% of plastic, the plastic molded parts only account for roughly 10% of its weight, which shows how for the automotive industry has already come in using plastic improve car performance.

But the use of plastics in cars also has other benefits. By using durable plastics, car manufacturers can also avoid common problems associated with using metal, like metal fatigue and rust. The fact that plastic is lightweight, highly affordable and sometimes even more durable than metal makes it the perfect choice auto manufacturers.

The use of plastics has helped car manufacturers design and produce cars that are safer, cheaper and more eco-friendly. The best part is that these newer, more fuel efficient cars are both cheaper to buy and drive when compared to their older counterparts. Back in the day when cars still largely consisted of metal, it wasn’t as common for an average middle class family to have their own transportation.

Automotive Mold Design and Manufacturing

When it comes to molding car parts, molders need the best possible plastic injection molds to assure every part will perform well. Good molders already know how to mix polymers for maximum durability while producing parts, but there’s an essential step to producing quality parts that can’t be overlooked.

If you’re a molder, producing automobile parts your clients will be satisfied with begins with the molds you use. A good mold is one of the key things you need to run a successful plastic injection molding company. Your mold making company should be your trusted business partner who will guide you through the design, manufacturing and maintenance process every step of the way.

Keeping your molds properly maintained is necessary if you want to consistently mold durable parts for automobiles. Without proper plastic injection mold maintenance, your parts will eventually develop faulty spots and become structurally weak.

American Plastic Injection Molds for the Automotive Industry

Injection molds are expensive pieces of equipment. The mold making process requires precision engineering and manufacturing standards to create molds with tight tolerance that will serve your business for years to come. A good mold shouldn’t be a finicky piece of equipment that sporadically breaks down. After all, you can’t afford to regularly have an unscheduled halt in production of parts simply because your mold won’t function as it should.

Many plastic injection molders make the mistake of working with foreign companies that can produce molds for much cheaper. But when it comes to buying plastic injection molds, you really do get what you pay for.

If you buy a mold at a fraction of the price you’d pay in America, it’s not just because you’re buying from a country with a weaker currency. A large part of the the discount you think you’re getting is because workers producing the molds aren’t equally skilled. Companies that cater to a cheaper market aren’t set on giving you the best worth for your money in the long-term. They’re simply looking to reduce your immediate expenses, even if it ends up costing you more in maintenance and repairs in the long-run.

While the initial cost of buying a local, American-made mold might seem like a large amount to pay upfront, it’s an investment that can make or break your company. Buying a good mold from a company that will help you keep it properly maintained according to a maintenance schedule you can plan in advance (as opposed to a mold that breaks down when you need it most) will help you run your company in a way that’s within your control. A reliable mold can help you stay on top of part production and streamline your processes for maximum results.

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.

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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Plastic Injection Mold Making

The History of Plastic Injection Mold Making

The manufacturing process of plastic goods has come a long way since the first plastics were synthesized during the industrial revolution. One vitally important part of the process, the production of accurate molds to shape plastics into almost any thinkable form, has also developed and changed considerably.

The Development of Plastic

The word plastic is derived from the Greek word plastikos, which means both “able to be molded” and “pertaining to molding”. Hence, the word was in use long before plastic, as the synthesized material known today, was around. The very word we use to refer to plastic, points back to how capable it is of being molded into various shapes.

Charles_Goodyear_(Congressman_from_New_York)

Charles Goodyear’s discovery of the vulcanization to process rubber, greatly helped to further the development of plastics as we know them today. So much so that, four years before Goodyear’s death in 1860, Alexander Parkes had already developed what is considered to be the first man-made plastic, Parkesine. Parkes patented this discovery in 1862.

Parkesine was easy to mold, but unfortunately the material was also highly flammable and expensive to produce.

This discovery – that later developed significantly, and that still continues to develop today – was the first step towards the modernization of molds. Plastic soon became one of the most versatile and easily molded materials available, able to produce an incredibly wide variety of everyday goods.

When the first plastic injection molds were made that could easily mass produce goods, there was an estimated 18,000 materials available for injection molding. Today, the amount of new polymers used for the plastic injection molding process is estimated to expand with approximately 750 new polymers yearly.

The Rise of Plastic Injection Mold Making

In 1872, American inventor, John Wesley Hyatt and his brother Isaiah, patented the first injection mold. It was a very simple machine compared to what would later follow. Working by means of a hypodermic needle and a plunger, which injected plastic through a cylinder into a mold.

Although this invention wasn’t very widely used to mass produce everyday goods, things that had previously been made with materials such as ivory, were now mass-produced by molding plastic. Billiard balls, dice and piano keys were among some the first items that could now be manufactured using this discovery.

German chemists, Arthur Eichengrün and Theodore Becker, further expanded on this discovery . In 1903 they invented the first soluble forms of cellulose acetate. The substance was later made available in a powder that was easy to mold using injection molding processes.

In 1919, Eichengrün went on to develop the first injection molding press. And in 1939 he patented the molding of plasticized cellulose acetate.

Mass Production Through Injection Molding

During World War II, demand for new technologies in various fields, like aviation and transportation, greatly increased. Plastic injection mold making was another field of technology that expanded during this time because of a high demand for inexpensive, mass-produced goods.

American inventor, James Watson Hendry, built the first injection screw machine in 1946. Materials could now be mixed thoroughly before being injected, which enabled Hendry’s invention to mix colored or recycled plastic to virgin materials. Screw injection machines are still in use today, accounting for approximately 95% of plastic injection machines used in modern manufacturing methods.

Hendry later also developed the first gas-assisted injection molding machines in the 1970s. The invention – which allowed for production of hollow, more complex items that cooled quickly – broadened the scope of plastic goods that could be manufactured through injection molding while also ensuring a process that was considerably more efficient on almost every level. Time, cost and waste were all reduced.

Modern Plastic injection mold Making

Plastic injection molds are now made using a highly advanced process, capable of producing molds accurate to a hundredth of a millimeter. This is remarkably precise, as a millimeter is only 0.254 of an inch, meaning plastic molds are now produced accurately within 0.00254 of an inch.

Molds are made from chromium steel, a high durability metal that can withstand repeated high-pressure injection of plastic. Several bars of chromium steel are assembled into a block, called a mold base, and are then mounted on a milling machine to shave the bars to the right dimension.

Strategically positioned holes are drilled in the bases for guide pins and bushings to hold together the two halves of which most molds consist. Following this step, a grinder is used to smooth all the surfaces, preparing the base for the high-precision machining operations necessary to shape it into a mold component.

A computer-guided machine, called a CNC, wears the base slowly to create the mold component’s shape. The CNC machine works at a painstakingly slow pace in order to insure precise accuracy, taking several hours, often more than twenty, to complete a single mold component.

We offer the best Innovative Technology Solutions. Injection molding works best for functional prototyping, pilot runs, bridge tooling and low-volume production of on-demand parts. More than 100 different production-grade thermoplastic, liquid silicone rubber, steel, stainless steel and magnesium materials are available. See our full tool list, we are confident we can help you meet your projects needs with ease.

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Most mold components, but especially ones with fine detailing, will then go on to a second tooling machine. The second machine, called the EDM, is outfitted with a copper electrode in the shape of the plastic part. The electrode is polished to ensure faultless casting and measured with a highly sophisticated measuring device.

On the EDM, strong electric currents are passed through the electrode to penetrate the mold formed by the CNC machine in the first part of the production process, leaving a cavity, or imprint, shaped like the electrode itself.

The surface of the cavity is polished smoothly to even out any roughness still left after the initial tooling is done.

Very specialized skills are needed to produce plastic molds and, although Plastic injection mold making still remains time-consuming and costly, when the expense is viewed in terms of what is achieved, impeccable part design combined with low-cost mass production of goods, the process is well worth the investment made.