Tag: Plastic Injection Mold

Inventor to Entrepreneur: Plastic Injection Molding

Posted on August 21, 2017 by - Blog

Inventor to Entrepreneur: Plastic Injection Molding

Plastic is a wonderful, versatile material that can be used for producing nearly anything! The great thing about plastic and injection molding is that it makes mass-production for products more accessible. It’s no longer necessary for every item you buy in the store to be meticulously handcrafted.

What makes plastic injection molding even better, is that entrepreneurs can come up with an endless amount of new ideas for products that will improve our daily lives. Everything from technology to basic toys have some plastic-molded parts. And while we don’t think of the injection molding process often, it’s part of our daily lives. Even the device you’re using to browse the Internet, has some plastic molded parts!

But if you, like the average person on the street, have no idea where to begin in making your product idea a reality through injection molding, there are some simple steps to take.

Is Your Idea Worth It?

The first, most important question to ask yourself before having a product mass-produced, is whether or not the product will truly be profitable. Unfortunately there’s no way to know for sure, and as with any new business venture, there will always be some risk involved.

But that shouldn’t stop you from doing your research.

When thinking about whether or not the product you want to make will sell, you can ask yourself some basic questions like:

  • Does my idea solve a problem?
  • Does my idea improve upon an existing product?
  • Will there be a large enough market interested in buying my product?
  • Can I explain the benefits of my product simple and succinctly?
  • Can my product be manufactured at a realistic cost?

You’ll have to answer the first few questions for yourself by doing some market research. But the last one will require you to get quotes from product designers and plastic injection mold manufacturers.

Where to Start?

If you have a good idea that you believe will sell, your first challenge will be to get it on paper. Draw your design using some pen and paper. Don’t worry if you aren’t good at drawing, the important part is for your drawing to clearly show what you expect the finished product to be like.

You can also make some basic prototypes illustrating your idea using things like clay. Although it’s unlikely that a clay prototype would be functional, this will help designers understand what your product should look like in 3D. Apart from your clay prototype, you can also build a functional prototype using anything you can find around the house. This prototype will help you explain your idea more effectively.

Once you have proper designs and product examples, it’ can be a good time to venture into having it made in plastic. When you start out, getting your idea 3D printed can be an excellent way to make a realistic prototype of the end product.

3D printing is a wonderful technology for producing small amounts of plastic parts without the upfront investment of having a plastic injection mold made. For this reason, some products never go further than the 3D printing stage. An example of an innovative for 3D printing is in the manufacturing of prosthetics for amputees. Because every amputee has very specialized individual needs, 3D printing is now used to manufacture low-cost, custom-made prosthetics.

However, most products have to be mass-produced in order to be profitable, so for the purpose of your product design, you’re likely to use 3D printing only during the prototyping phase of design.

Once you’ve got a basic, 3D printed prototype of your final product, you’re ready to take the idea further. If there’s anywhere you were hoping to pitch your product idea, the prototype is sure to come in very handy!

Let’s Talk CAD Designs

This is where you hand your ideas over to the professionals. Computer-aided design – or CAD, for short – is a process where professional designers take your idea to the next level.

CAD designers know more about the injection molding process and the manufacturing of plastics products in general, so their designs will usually be made considering different aspect of the manufacturing process. This is essential for successful product design, seeing as a plastic injection mold will have to be designed and made specifically to produce parts for your product. The professional product designers will draw the final product design, not only thinking about the functionality of your product, but also how the molds producing parts for your product will function.

Some of the things a professional CAD designer will keep in mind while designing the final product include:

  • What material will be used to make each part of the final product?
  • How easily can each part of the final product be molded?
  • Where should the gates be placed on the mold to ensure the part has no molding defects?

Chances are, your designer will take an example of their design to a plastic injection mold manufacturer in order to decide how the molds should function. Plastic injection mold design and quality in the manufacturing of the mold itself will play a huge role in the quality of your final product.

If the gates feeding molten plastic into the mold aren’t placed correctly, for instance, the plastic might not fill the whole mold cavity and your parts could all end up being defective.

For this reason, your mold designer and manufacturer will be just as important in getting your product idea on the shelf as your designer.

At Quality Mold Shop, we pride ourselves in producing precision molds for any industry. We’ve successfully designed and maintained injection molds for the technology, medicine and the automotive industries. Talk to us about mold design, maintenance and manufacturing.

Significant Advantages to Using Plastic Injection Molding for the Manufacturing of Parts

Posted on August 14, 2017 by - Blog

Significant Advantages to Using Plastic Injection Molding for the Manufacturing of Parts

Plastic injection molding is a great flexible technique for delivering parts and items. It is one of the favored techniques for assembling parts since it has various preferences over different strategies for plastic molding. Not exclusively is plastic injection molding less complex and more solid, it is additionally to a great degree more proficient. You ought to have no questions about utilizing this strategy to produce parts.

How to Mold Living Hinges

Posted on July 24, 2017 by - Blog

How to Mold Living Hinges

Living hinges are popular in low-cost containers, like the ones you see on Tic Tac or floss containers. But the use of living hinges can vary widely, and so the molding technique is also often used for producing medical instruments such as hemostats.

As you could expect, molding living hinges would be much more difficult without modern plastic injection molding technology. Especially seeing as the hinge itself relies on the plasticity of the material to last longer.

What Are Living Hinges?

Don’t know what a living hinge is? Well, actually it’s quite simple.

Like a normal hinge you’d expect to see somewhere like on a door, living hinges can be used to make things like swinging container lids. The only difference is that, unlike normal hinges, living hinges don’t have loops and pins to make up the hinge mechanism. A normal hinge typically merges two different parts together in this way. However, living hinges are more like a line where the plastic bends to allow movement. Basically, it’s a “seamless” hinge, because there aren’t two parts merged together by a hinge. Instead, the hinge in molded into a single-part product.

What this means is that living hinges have to be able to flex constantly without tearing. This is what makes plastic a good option for molding living hinges, seeing as metal would break as a result of metal fatigue if one were to make a living hinge from it. Materials such as wood, on the other hand, aren’t even bendable. By the time wood is thin enough to bend, it would simply splinter if it were to be flexed so much.

But just because plastic is a good material for molding living hinges, doesn’t mean that all living hinges molded out of plastic are perfect. On the contrary, products that have living hinges typically have a lifespan that lasts as long as the living hinge is functional. After a certain amount of time, even a plastic living hinge can grow weak and tear along the hinge line.

For the most part, living hinge failure isn’t such a big problem, seeing as living hinges aren’t usually molded into products that need to have a long lifespan. However, living hinge failure can become a problem if the hinge doesn’t last long enough to fulfill its purpose. This can be especially true in the case of something like a container that breaks before its contents is all used. So even though living hinges don’t have to last forever, they at least need to last long enough to fulfill their purpose.

To mold durable living hinges will take some careful consideration on your behalf.

How to Mold Durable Living Hinges

To mold a living hinge that lives up to your expectations, every step of part creation is important, from the actual design of the part to the material used to make it. Different plastics have different uses, and not all plastics are a good choice for molding plastic hinges into a part.

So, although molding a hinge into a part might seem like a challenging task, it’s much like molding anything else, as long as you plan everything properly and pay attention to detail during every step of part creation, you’ll get the results you were hoping for.

For the most part, experts tend to recommend homopolymer PP for molding living hinges. However, your molding will also have a big influence on the quality of your final part, so don’t neglect checking the ideal molding temperatures and processes, seeing as you’re likely to get better results molding hinges at lower temperatures.

Mold Design and Construction

When it comes to molding any plastic part, the design and construction of your mold is just as important as what polymers you use and the process itself. Unfortunately, plastic molding isn’t a simple process. There are many things that can go wrong along the way, and a bad mold could very well be one of them.

Things to consider in mold design and construction include where to place gates and understanding how your material will flow through the mold once it’s entered. This might seem like a small things, but the flow pattern of the molten plastic in your mold can have a potentially huge impact on the quality of the parts a mold can produce, and unfortunately some molds with faulty designs are simply incapable of producing parts that live up to their intended purpose.

Of all the steps in molding a part with living hinges, having your mold designed and made will usually be the most costly, and so it’s important that the mold delivers as you hoped it would from the start.

The first step in getting your mold made would be proper part design, of course, so don’t neglect proper part design and prototyping. There’s simply no sense in having a high quality mold made for a part that was poorly designed to start with.

However, once you have a good part, your mold’s ability to accurately produce the part becomes the next most vital step in molding a proper part. Because unlike with selecting your polymer, changing your mold and experimenting with it won’t be as simple.

To get a mold that you can rely on, be sure to contact us at Quality Mold Shop. We’ve produced a large number of molds for almost every industry, and our precision equipment allows us to manufacture high quality molds for creating even the most detailed parts.

Top 5 Injection Molding Defects to Avoid

Posted on July 10, 2017 by - Blog

Top 5 Injection Molding Defects to Avoid

You need to recognize what sorts of value deformities to search for to ensure your item fulfills your client. We should take a gander at the assembling procedure and the infusion forming defects that generally influence these items.

Infusion shaping is a typical assembling process used to make segments made of metals, polymers, glasses, desserts and different materials. Pellets of material are liquefied and after that infused at high weight into a mold that will set to frame the coveted part. Infusion shaping is utilized to deliver things, for example, kitchen utensils, cultivate instruments, housings for hardware and some more.

Infusion shaping deformities

Deformities in infusion shaped items can by and large be ascribed to issues in one of the three ranges:

  • The crude materials bolstered into the form
  • The form, or
  • The infusion forming process, (for example, the settings of the machine)

Here are five normal infusion shaping imperfections to keep an eye out for while reviewing infusion formed items, what the causes are and how you can dodge them:

1. Stream marks

Stream marks show up as a wavy pattern for the most part on smaller areas of the shaped segment. Liquid plastic, for instance, cools rapidly amid the infusion procedure and stream marks are clear when the infusion speed is too moderate. The plastic turns out to be somewhat strong and sticky while as yet topping off the form, causing the wave example to show up.

To evade this, the producer can expand the:

  • Injection speed
  • Nozzle breadth
  • Cylinder temperature, and additionally
  • Injection weight

For item review, stream imprints may be viewed as “minor” infusion forming absconds if unobtrusive and not on a noticeable piece of the thing. You should seriously think about a stream stamp to be a “noteworthy” imperfection on the off chance that it influences usefulness of your item or darkens a logo.

2. Short shot

A short shot is a fragmented segment which is caused by the stream solidifying off before the form is totally filled amid the infusion procedure. There are a couple of conceivable reasons why infusion may leave a void in the shape, for example,

  • Flow limitations, more often than not because of mind boggling or solidified stream channels
  • Hesitation amid infusion, or
  • Inadequate venting causing a development of pneumatic force against the stream

You may see short shot in your plastic show as deficient compartments in plastic racks. A basic illustration is short or missing prongs on a plastic fork. Short shots are an average significant imperfection in infusion formed items.

Tending to short shots in assembling will rely upon the reason. On the off chance that the reason is identified with fill rate or wavering, raising the infusion weight, speed or temperature are conceivable cures. In the event that there is stream confinement, you may need to clear solidified stream channels or update the form. Also, insufficient venting is best tended to by including air vents close to the finish of the influenced channel(s).

3. Burn marks

Burn marks in the plastic show up as dark or dull red staining when the material consumes amid infusion. Normally considered a minor imperfection, a burn stamp amid the infusion procedure may be caused by at least one of the accompanying:

  • Overheating because of caught air
  • Excessive infusion speed, and
  • Excessive dissolve temperature

In the event that you see consume stamps in your plastic parts, there are a couple of conceivable remedial moves to make in the assembling procedure. Shortening the process duration, bringing down the temperature as well as backing off the infusion speed may avert additionally consuming. Caught air can be settled by guaranteeing satisfactory gas vents and entryway sizes.

4. Streak

Streak is an abundance of filler material that can show up as a thin lip or distension at the edge of a part. This overabundance material shows up in light of the fact that material has streamed outside of the proposed stream channels between the plates. Streak is for the most part inconspicuous however may be viewed as a noteworthy imperfection if especially evident on an item. Some regular reasons for streak include:

  • Poorly fitting or composed trim plates
  • Insufficient clip drive, and
  • Improper ventilation

    • Molds ought to be verified that their plates fit together appropriately and just enable material to stream in the channels. Clasping power may should be expanded, since this drive shields the material from streaming outside the stream channels. Finally, air vents may should be added to keep pneumatic stress from shaping and opposing the stream.

    Unless the glimmer is significant to the point that tooling should be revised, trimming the segments is typically enough to guarantee these are not obvious on the completed item. On the off chance that inadmissible glimmer is showing up on your items, you can request that your provider ensure it’s trimmed before delivery.

    5. Staining

    Staining is an infusion shaping deformity that shows unspecified streaking or shading in an infusion formed item. Staining is ordinarily because of one of two causes:

    • Improper blending of the masterbatch, the added substance utilized for shading material, or
    • Impurities acquainted with the material amid the embellishment procedure infusion Molding Defects

      • In the event that the masterbatch is not uniformly blended, you may see a dash of shading at last item. What’s more, you can have polluting influences acquainted with a shape if the container, material nourish range or form plates of a machine are not cleaned legitimately before generation. To maintain a strategic distance from this issue, guarantee that the maker is appropriately cleaning the infusion shaping machine before delivering your things.

      Contingent upon seriousness, staining could constitute either a minor or a noteworthy deformity. What’s more, there is no real way to evacuate this imperfection through revise of the completed item.

      Conclusion

      Since you have a thought of a portion of the normal infusion shaping deformities to pay special mind to, you’ll be in a superior position to survey the nature of your own items. You’re better arranged to survey a review report of your item or investigate the item yourself.

How To Fix Injection Molding Defects

Posted on June 26, 2017 by - Blog

How To Fix Injection Molding Defects

Even though society as we know it right now would be radically different without injection molding, it’s a process few people would stop to give any thought. But in truth, injection molding is a fascinating process that involves involvement from highly skilled professionals working in a variety of different fields.

Injection molding combines art and design with science, technology and precision engineering. And while the basic idea of injecting molten plastic into a shaped cavity for mass production seems simple enough, the process is reasonably delicate, and requires special care attention along the way to ensure the desired results. Troubleshooting can easily occur if a pivotal part of the process isn’t being done right, and this will usually show up on the molded parts as defects.

The good news is that defects in your molded parts don’t necessarily indicate any significant issues with your molds. It’s completely possible for a good mold to produce bad parts when parts of the molding process aren’t being performed correctly.

Flow Lines

Flow lines show up as darker streaks in the molded part. As the name suggests, the patterns of these lines look similar to the pattern you’d expect the molten plastic to flow in, with darker lines occurring close to where the mixture enters the mold.

Assuming your mold is in good shape, the best advice for preventing flow lines is to increase the rate at which plastic flows into the mold a bit. Increasing the injection speed can prevent the mixture from solidifying at different times during the process, which should help the get rid of the lines.

However, if using the optimal injection speed doesn’t change the problem, it might be best to have your mold inspected. Flow lines are more like to occur in areas where the wall thickness isn’t equal throughout. A flow gate located in the wrong area of a mold can also cause these kinds of problems.

Weld Lines

Weld lines look a bit like seams in a garment. They’re often visible in areas around a shaped area of your molded part. And these lines are, in fact, somewhat like the injection molding version of clothing seams. They’re caused when molten plastic flowing into the mold from two different directions of flow come together.

Once again, it’s worthwhile trying to increase the injection speed to prevent this problems from occurring. You can also look into using a different kind of plastic.

If all else fails, you might be able to have your mold adjusted to change the flow pattern of the molten plastic in the mold.

Surface Delamination

Like most plastic molding defects, surface delamination is very noticeable problem. In this case, your molded prototype parts will have layers on the surface instead of appearing smooth. These layers are bad news for the part, as they easily peel away.

One of the main causes of surface delamination is the presence of a foreign material, or contaminant, that cannot mix with your plastic. This contaminant then causes the plastic to separate in the way you see with this molding defect.

A good call for preventing surface delamination is to use only as much mold release agents as is absolutely necessary. However, if your molds are poorly designed, or have faulty ejection mechanisms, your best choice is to have the mold inspected and adjusted by a qualified mold professional.

Short Shot

Short shots might cause a bit more panic for some molders. In the case of a short shot, your molten plastic will actually fail to fill up the entire mold cavity during the injection process. This will cause your molded part to be incomplete when it’s ejected, as there will be missing areas in your part where it didn’t flow into the mold.

Your first choice in fixing this problem would be to reconsider the plastic you’re using. If you’re using the wrong material, it can actually set before filling the mold cavity, meaning never flow into the parts of the mold that would usually be filled last. Increasing the temperature can also help to prevent your plastic from solidifying prematurely.

Another cause for this problem can be that your mold isn’t allowing gas to effectively escape from the mold cavity as the molten plastic flows in. This trapped gas will be condensed in the mold cavity, creating too much pressure to allow the molten plastic to flow into that area.

These are just some of the problems you might experience during molding. When trying to successfully create your first molded prototype, you’ll soon see that injection molding isn’t as simple as getting your equipment set up and starting the process. A lot of factors will contribute to creating a molded part that lives up to your expectations.

Your team of professionals will arguably play the biggest role in whether or not your part turns out as you planned. A team of qualified professionals should be able to help you with choosing the right plastics and injection speeds to mold quality parts.

But having the best team behind you is essential in all stages of part production. Including the very first stages of designing and building your mold. If your mold isn’t functioning properly, nothing else you can do will compensate for this malfunction. At Quality Mold Shop, we can help you fix and adjust dysfunctional molds, as well to design molds specifically to avoid common part defects.

Best 10 Injection Molding Defects And How To Fix Them

Posted on June 5, 2017 by - Blog

Best 10 Injection Molding Defects And How To Fix Them

Making injection models is both a craftsmanship and a science. Abnormal amounts of specialized skill and tender loving care are required to keep little errors from costing organizations huge cash with ass-production of novel parts.

Counteracting such a situation is about exceptionally capable design. This article discusses some of the molding defects that can occur in a part during injection molding, and ways to fix and avoid them. Design shortcomings we will discuss include:

  • Flow Lines
  • Sink Marks
  • Vacuum Voids
  • Surface Delamination
  • Weld Lines
  • Short Shots
  • Warping
  • Burn Marks
  • Jetting
  • Flash

Most mistakes are caused by nescient personnel without the necessary experience or the right tools at their disposal. Conversely, creative solutions and ingenuity abound in personnel with the right experience and the correct combination of hardware and software. Finding the right team of people with relevant expertise is the most important part of the process.

Flow Lines

Description: Flow lines are streaks, patterns, or lines – ordinarily off-toned in shading – that appear on the prototype part as an outcome of the physical path and cooling profile of the liquid plastic as it flows into the injection mold tooling cavity. Injection molded plastic starts its adventure through the part tooling by means of a passage area called a “door.” It then courses through the device hole and cools (in the end solidifying into a strong solid).

Causes: Flow line deformities are created by the differing speed at which the liquid plastic streams as it alters course through the forms and curves inside the shape device. They likewise happen when the plastic courses through areas with changing wall thickness, or when the injection speed is too low making the plastic harden at various velocities.

Remedies:

  • Increase injection speeds and pressure to the ideal level, which will guarantee the cavities are filled appropriately (while not enabling the liquid plastic time to begin cooling in the wrong spot). The temperature of the liquid plastic or the mold itself can likewise be lifted to guarantee the plastic does not chill off adequately to bring about the imperfection.
  • Round corners and areas where the wall thickness changes to keep away from sudden alters in course and stream rate.
  • Find the entryway at a spot in the apparatus depression with thin walls.

Sink Marks

Description: Sink imprints are little holes or miseries that create in thicker territories of the injection mold when shrinkage happens in the inward segments of the completed item. The impact is to some degree like sinkholes in geology, yet brought about by shrinkage instead of disintegration.

Causes: Sink imprints are frequently brought on when the cooling time or the cooling system is lacking for the plastic to completely cool and cure while in the shape. They can likewise be brought on by deficient weight in the hole, or by an inordinate temperature at the entryway. All else being equal, thick sections of the injection molded part take longer to cool than thin ones and so are more likely to be where sink marks are located.

Remedies:

  • Form temperatures ought to be brought down, holding pressure expanded, and holding time drawn out to take into consideration more satisfactory cooling and curing.
  • Decreasing the thickness of the thickest wall areas will likewise guarantee speedier cooling and help diminish the probability of sink imprints.

Vacuum Voids

Depiction: Vacuum voids are pockets of air caught inside or near the surface of an injection mold.

Causes: Vacuum voids are regularly brought on by uneven solidification between the surface and the internal areas of the model. This can be disturbed when the holding pressure is insufficient to condense the molten plastic in the mold (and thereby force out air that would otherwise get trapped). Voids can also develop from a part that is cast from a mold with two halves that are not correctly aligned.

Remedies:

  • Find the entryway at the thickest piece of the trim.
  • Change to a less thick plastic. This will guarantee that less gas is caught as air can escape all the more quickly.
  • Increment holding weight and in addition holding time.
  • Guarantee that form parts are impeccably adjusted.

Surface Delamination

Description: Surface delamination is a condition where thin surface layers show up on the part because of a contaminant material. These layers seem like coatings and can for the most part be peeled off (i.e. “delaminate”).

Causes: Foreign materials that find their way into the liquid plastic separate from the completed item on the grounds that the contaminant and the plastic can’t bond. The fact that they can’t bond not only has an effect on the presence of the mold additionally on its quality. The contaminant acts as a localized fault trapped within the plastic. An over-dependence on mold release agents can also cause delamination.

Remedies:

  • Pre-dry the plastic appropriately before embellishment.
  • Increment the form temperature.
  • Smooth out the corners and sharp turns in the form configuration to evade sudden changes in liquefy stream.
  • Concentrate more on the discharge component in the form configuration to decrease or dispense with the reliance on shape discharge operators.

Weld Lines

Description: Weld lines are in reality more like a plane than a line that shows up in a section where liquid plastics meet each different as they spill out of two distinct parts of the shape.

Causes: Weld lines are brought on by the deficient holding of at least two stream fronts when there is fractional hardening of the liquid plastic.

Remedies:

  • Raise the temperature of the mold or liquid plastic.
  • Increment the injection speed.
  • Adjust the design for the flow pattern to be a single source flow.
  • Switch to a less viscous plastic or one with a lower melting temperature

Short Shot

Depiction: As the term suggests, short shots can be portrayed as a circumstance where a molding shot misses the mark. This means that the molten plastic for some reason does not fully occupy the mold cavity or cavities, resulting in a portion where there is no plastic. The finished product becomes deficient because it is incomplete.

Causes: Short shots can be created by various things. Erroneous alignment of the shot or plasticizing limits can bring about the plastic material being insufficient to fill the depressions. In the event that the plastic is excessively thick, it might cement before completely involving every one of the holes and result in a short shot. Deficient degassing or gas venting systems can likewise bring about short shots since air is caught and has no real way to get away; plastic material can’t possess the space that air or gas is occupying.

Remedies:

  • Select a less viscous plastic with higher flowability. This plastic will fill the hardest-to-reach cavities.
  • Increase mold or melt temperature so as to increase flowability.
  • Account for gas generation by designing the mold so that gas is not trapped within the mold and is properly vented.
  • Increase the material feed in the molding machine or switch to a machine that has a higher material feed in the event that the maximum material feed has been reached.

Warping

Description: Warping (or warpage) is the misshaping that happens when there is uneven shrinkage in the diverse parts of the formed segment. The outcome is a curved, uneven, or twisted shape where one was not planned.

Causes: Warping is normally brought on by non-uniform cooling of the form material. Diverse cooling rates in various parts of the shape make the plastic cool distinctively and in this manner make inside burdens. These burdens, when discharged, prompt distorting.

Remedies:

  • Ensure that the cooling time is sufficiently long and that it is slow enough to avoid the development of residual stresses being locked into the part.
  • Outline the mold with uniform wall thickness thus that the plastic streams in a solitary course.
  • Select plastic materials that are less inclined to contract and distort. Semi-crystalline materials are for the most part more inclined to twisting.

Burn Marks

Depiction: Burn imprints are stains, normally rust hued, that show up on the surface of the injection models.

Causes: Burn imprints are brought about either by the degradation of the plastic material because of extreme warming or by injection speeds that are too quick. Burn marks can likewise be brought about by the overheating of caught air, which cuts the surface of the shaped part.

Remedies:

  • Lessen injection speeds.
  • Streamline gas venting and degassing.
  • Reduce mold and melt temperatures.

Jetting

Depiction: Jetting alludes to a circumstance where liquid plastic neglects to adhere to the form surface because of the speed of infusion. Being liquid, the liquid plastic sets in an express that demonstrates the wavy folds of the fly stream on the surface of the infusion shaped part.

Causes: Jetting happens for the most part when the liquefy temperature is too low and the consistency of the liquid plastic turns out to be too high, in this manner expanding the resistance of its course through the shape. At the point when the plastic interacts with the shape dividers, it is quickly cooled and the consistency is expanded. The material that courses through behind that thick plastic pushes the gooey plastic further, leaving scratch blemishes on the surface of the completed item.

Remedies:

  • Increment form and dissolve temperatures.
  • Increment the extent of the entryway so that the infusion speed turns out to be slower.
  • Improve entryway configuration to guarantee satisfactory contact between the liquid plastic and the shape.

Flash

Depiction: Flash is a molding imperfection that happens when some liquid plastic breaks from the form hole. Commonplace courses for escape are through the separating line or ejector stick areas. This expulsion cools and stays appended to the completed item.

Causes: Flash can occur when the mold is not clamped together with enough force (a force strong enough to withstand the opposing forces generated by the molten plastic flowing through the mold), which allows the plastic to seep through. The use of molds that have exceeded their lifespan will be worn out and contribute to the possibility of flash. Additionally, excessive injection pressure may force the plastic out through the route of least resistance.

Remedies:

  • Increase the clamp pressure to ensure that the mold parts remain shut during shots.
  • Ensure that the mold is properly maintained and cleaned (or replaced when it has reached the end of its useful lifespan).
  • Adopt optimal molding conditions like injection speed, injection pressure, mold temperature, and proper gas venting.

A large number of the defects mentioned above can be prevented in the design process by incorporating proper tooling design into the iterative process. Using moldflow software like Solidworks plastics will help you identify ideal gate locations, anticipate air pockets, flow or weld lines, and vacuum voids. Most importantly, it will help you design solutions to these problems ahead of time, so that when it comes to production you do not have to worry about the defects costing you money.

How to Avoid Common Injection Molding Defects

Posted on May 29, 2017 by - Blog

How to Avoid Common Injection Molding Defects

When working with any assembling procedure, various deformities unique to that procedure ordinarily happen. This is true across many processes and industries, including plastic injection molding and high volume injection molding.

There are a few normal infusing forming abandons; be that as it may, an injection molder who is cautious about quality, similar to our group at Quality Mold Shop, will have the capacity to deal with these injection molding deformities, limiting or dispensing with them all together.

These six most common plastic part defects can all be traced to one of three sources: the resin or additives used, the injection molding process, or the mold itself.

Resin and Additive-Caused Defects

Two common defects caused by issues with the resin or resin additives used during injection molding are delamination and discoloration.

Delamination

Delamination, when a completed part has a layer of flaky material at the surface, hurts both aesthetic of your part and its strength. Created by humidity contamination of the resin pellets or by other defilement of the dissolved resin with a different resin, or by discharge specialists in the mold, delamination is the aftereffect of the resin being kept from bonding.

Various strategies, both basic and more mind boggling, can be utilized to counteract delamination. On the off chance that dampness is the issue, pre-drying the resin pellets or expanding mold temperature will offer assistance. In the event that form discharge specialists are the cause, a mold redesign that places more focus on the ejection mechanism will help to eliminate mold release. If it is caused by cross-contaminated resins, that will need to be replaced with virgin material.

Staining

Staining is basically when a completed part is not the same as proposed color. Brought on most usually by extra pellets in the container, excessively hot barrel temperature or remaining resin in the feed zone, the issue can be tended to by altogether flushing the container and bolster zone of a machine in the middle of procedures, subsequently avoiding staining as is normally done. Purging compound can likewise be successful to expel undesirable shading or resin.

Process-Caused Defects

In spite of constant advances in injection molding innovation, process-derived injection molding defects still occur. Two of the most common are burn marks and flow marks.

Burn Marks

Burn imprints are surface imprints, in some cases progressing to debased plastic, that are brought about by either caught air which ends up overheated or genuine resin that overheats. There are three approaches to keep away from burn marks: diminish resin injection speeds, which will bring down the likelihood of air getting caught; include or optimize venting and degassing systems; or reduce the mold and/or melt temperature.

Flow Marks

Flow marks are lined patterns, regularly wavy, or discoloration on a part surface. They are most generally created by resin cooling too rapidly or incorrect gate location. In the most ideal situation, flow marks can be wiped out by expanding injection speed and weight, which will guarantee uniform filling and cooling. In the direst outcome imaginable, a mold upgrade with an accentuation on maintaining a strategic distance from sudden stream heading changes and entryway area might be vital.

Mold-Caused Defects

Flash and short shots are two of the more typical injection molding imperfections brought on by mold outline or upkeep issues.

Flash

Sometimes known as burrs, flash is the occurrence of thin, wafer-like protrusions on a finished part caused when melted resin escapes the mold cavity. Most common along the parting line or up an ejector pin, flash can be caused by excessive injection speed or pressure, in which case the fix is a simple reduction. More often flash is due to poorly designed or severely degraded molds, in which case a redesign or retooling is required. Flash can also be caused by too high of a mold temperature and excessive barrel heat.

Short Shot

A short shot is when a dose of resin misses the mark regarding filling the shape. It can be brought about by endeavoring to utilize the wrong resin type or by poor process settings, yet is most normally created by door blockages or too little of an entryway distance across, a typical issue because of too low weight or insufficient warmth. On the off chance that a higher soften file resin or expanded dissolve temperature doesn’t take care of a short shot issue, you may need to upgrade the runner framework to advance stream.

Plastic Injection Molding vs. 3D Printing

Posted on May 22, 2017 by - Blog

Plastic Injection Molding vs. 3D Printing

3D printing is a relatively new technology, and with its rise, manufacturers of plastic goods are excited to explore the possibilities of manufacturing using the 3D printing process. But what are the capabilities of 3D printing? Can 3D printing replace injection molding entirely as a way of producing plastic parts?

This is where you have to be careful. While 3D printing is a brilliant and promising technology that has very useful applications in the manufacturing process, it’s not quite able to replace the standard injection molding process just yet. Learning about the differences between plastic injections molding and 3D printing can help you to get the most out of each process.

What Is 3D printing?

3D printing is basically what it sounds like. During the manufacturing process, a special 3D printing machine is used to manufacture a plastic part through printing layers of the material onto the part until it’s complete. As with regular printing you’d do at home, the 3D printer is linked to a computer with a finished plan of what the part should look like once it’s done.

The benefit 3D printing has over injection molding – and the reason why many manufacturers are interested in whether or not 3D printing can replace plastic injection molding – is because (unlike plastic injection molds) 3D printing machines don’t have to be custom made for every part. What this means is that one machine can produce a relatively large amount of differently shaped parts.

With plastic injection molds, only one shape can be made by one mold, and that shape is determined by the mold cavity, of course. For different shapes, you need different molds, and having a plastic injection mold designed and made is rather costly.

This once again shows why manufacturers would be interested in a tool that can be used for any part without having to be specially made. It seems exciting, and like it can open up the world of manufacturing to brand new possibilities that would’ve been too costly in the past.

But how does injection molding really compare to 3D printing? Can manufacturers replace their injection molds with 3D printers now? Are 3D printers the future of manufacturing in the plastic industry?

Injection Molds vs 3D Printers

It’s true that 3D printing is a promising and exciting new development in the manufacturing industry. It’s also true that 3D printing can save manufacturers money when it comes to producing their final products. But currently the 3D printing process is just not sophisticated enough to replace plastic injection molding entirely.

The best use of 3D printing is for prototyping parts. You can save enormous amounts of money by having prototypes produces through 3D printing rather than injection molding while you’re still in the phase of designing a product that you aren’t mass-producing yet. This is especially the case if you only want one or two prototypes.

But apart from helping you save money on producing a small amount of parts for prototyping, 3D printing loses its appeal once you want to mass-produce a part.

The cost per part for 3D printing will be much lower than that of injection molding initially, but the more parts you produce, the smaller the price gap between 3D printing and injection molding will become. Eventually, the price per part will break even, and after that injection molding will once again be cheaper than 3D printing.

The number of parts you can produce before reaching the break-even point where injection molding and 3D printing costs the same per part will depend on the part you want to produce. But it can be surprisingly low sometimes, so you should look into the exact costs before assuming 3D printing will be cheaper.

Injection Molding Benefits

So, the relatively simple process of molding can still be cheaper than using clever computer software and a 3D printer. That comes as little surprise. But plastic injection molding is still superior to 3D printing in many other ways.

For instance, the molding process still has a much faster turnaround than that of printing. Which makes sense, since parts are produced through molding them in one go, rather than one layer at a time.

This is one reason why 3D printing still fails to be practical for mass-production. Compared to injection molding, it is painstakingly slow and you’d need a whole lot of printers to keep up with one single injection mold in terms of parts per hour.

But 3D printing is also less versatile. You’re restricted when it comes to what polymers you can use, so producing certain things through printing is literally still impossible in some cases. Meaning that you might not even be able to use 3D printing as a practical, cost-effective alternative for prototyping some parts.

And lastly, the versatility of injection molding allows you to create products of a higher quality.

So while 3D printing is exciting, it’s still far behind plastic injection molding. The technology will need to be improved to make it faster, more versatile and cost-effective for mass-production before it can realistically be used to manufacture high quality plastic parts. In the meantime, manufacturers should feel free to look into 3D printing for prototyping a small number of parts whenever possible.

Types of Plastic Molding

Posted on May 8, 2017 by - Blog

Types of Plastic Molding

Chances are, you’ve seen various videos on YouTube about how different everyday products are made. For a surprisingly large amount of different products, there’s some kind of molding involved in the manufacturing process. Even loaves of bread are baked in bread pans to give them a shape. And most candies – whether chocolate bars or jelly babies – are poured into molds of some sort.

Molding is a quick and convenient way to reproduce the same shape over and over while getting the same result every time. Because if this, it’s the most popular way of producing plastic parts. In the modern world, plastic is all around us. From children’s toys and kitchenware, to vehicles and medical equipment.

With the wide variety of uses plastic has, there are many things to consider during the process of designing parts. Not only will you have to choose the right polymer to ensure optimum part performance, you’ll need to know about different injection molding techniques that will ultimately shape your polymer into a usable plastic part.

How to Design a Plastic Product

Assuming you’re starting from scratch, with nothing but an idea for a plastic product you’d like to create in mind, there are a couple of things you should know about the creation of plastic products:

  • It’s good to have a design on hand for any product you want to make, but ultimately, you’ll have to get engineers and professional designers involved somewhere during the process.
  • 3D printing is a great way to help you create a cost effective prototype of any product you wish to create. Because 3D printing doesn’t require a specially designed mold, it’s easy to use this method without blowing the bank. However, 3D printing fails to be a viable long-term option for part production, as it’s not very versatile and takes much longer.
  • If you need to have a plastic mold specially designed and made in order to produce your product parts, you’re looking at a hefty sum of upfront investment. Plastic molds are very specialized pieces of precision-engineered equipment. That said, a good mold can complete 500,000-2,000,000 cycles in its lifetime, depending on what kind of mold you’re looking at.

With so many plastic products on the market, many people might not realize the sheer amount of work and dedication that goes into designing and creating these products.

With that said, let’s have a look at some of the molding processes used to create plastic parts.

Injection Molding

To explain injection molding simply, it’s the process where molten plastic is injected into a mold, then left to cool. Once the plastic has cooled, the plastic part is ejected and the process is repeated.

Plastic injection molds usually consist of two halves. Think about these halves as two halves of a hollow egg shell – when pressed tightly together, this shell with form a cavity into which the molten plastic can be poured. Obviously the mold won’t have an egg-shaped cavity unless you aren’t trying to mold egg shapes, though. The cavity will be shaped like whatever part is being produced.

Plastic injection molding is incredibly versatile, and is used to produce a large variety of differently shaped parts.

Rotational Molding

Rotational molding is mostly used to create parts that are hollow on the inside.

The process of rotational molding uses centrifugal force to form parts. During the process, liquid or powder-form resin is placed into a mold. The heated mold is then rotated, causing the resin to evenly coat the inside of the mold.

Blow Molding

Things like plastic bottles (like the ones in which soft drinks are often sold) are usually made using the blow molding process.

Like with most other forms of plastic molding, there’s a mold shape that serves as the “shell” of the shape you want to produce. But unlike with injection molding, the plastic isn’t simply injected into the mold. Instead, the plastic blown into the mold shape by filling it with air, much like when you blow up a balloon. As air is blown into the plastic, it takes the shape of the mold it’s blown into.

Compression Molding

With compression molding, the plastic is poured into a mold. Different parts of the mold then compress the plastic so that it’s literally squeezed into shape. This produces strong parts, and so the process is often used in the automotive industry.

Extrusion Molding

The basic concept behind extrusion molding is that the plastic is squeezed into a long cavity to shape it. It’s basically like if you were to squeeze cookie dough into a round, plastic pipe. You’d be left with cookie dough in a long, round cylindrical shape. If the pipe where square, you’d have cookie dough in a long, rectangular kind of shape.

This is the basic concept behind extrusion molding. And so this manufacturing process is used mostly to make long, cylinder-type shapes like pipes, for instance.

Those are just basic explanations of the main processes used to mass produce plastic parts. In some cases, a single plastic product will consist of different parts, and these different parts might be produced using different molding processes.