Tag: Plastic Injection Molding

Don’t Skip the New Mold Design Review

Posted on August 30, 2017 by - Blog

Don’t Skip the New Mold Design Review

Many organizations put in weeks, months, even years creating imaginative items. Various plan changes, testing, and fast prototyping are utilized to guarantee the item configuration is strong. With a product configuration close by the improvement group and investors are anxious to see their diligent work turn into an unmistakable part. Part files are sent out, purchase orders are placed, and the clock starts ticking on the ever important mold completion date.

The issue: the mold outlines are left to the mold producer to decide with next to zero oversight or evaluation. With packed courses of events and tight deadlines, the mold plans are optimized and sent to production for the molds to be assembled.

We see it constantly; these molds arrive and are set up for sampling. Some of the time there are evident issues, for example, insignificant water lines or little leader pins. At different periods the issues are more subtle, for example, the tool steel wasn’t firm and wear issues start to show up after time. These issues dependably cost time and cash. They can influence quality and consumer loyalty.

Tooling is an investment. In the event that the mold plan and construction quality are given the indistinguishable love and consideration that was given to the part outlines, you will get a decent profit for this venture. A composed and assembled mold will dependably spare cash over the long haul. The cost of the mold is rarely affected by the mold design review.

Quality Mold Shop knows the necessity of a composed and well-built mold. Get in touch with us today to perceive how Quality Mold Shop can help make your new project on-time, on budget, and successful.

How to Mold Living Hinges

Posted on July 31, 2017 by - Blog

How to Mold Living Hinges

Designing products is a major task. Don’t take the chance of making a mistake in the early stages! These design tips should help you on your way to the top.

1. Include Generous Radii

Liberal radii enhance course through the pivot amid trim and lessen stretch fixation amid utilize.

2. Incorporate “Shoulders”

“Shoulders” on the part make a level break. This will ensure the pivot will twist in the middle and that the part can twist enough for the pivot to have space to close.

3. Thin and Flexible is Best

A thicker pivot may seem more vigorous, however the more prominent extension at first glance can make the material surpass its yield point, shortening the life expectancy of the pivot. A more slender pivot is more adaptable.

4. Gap Long Hinges

Pivots longer than 6 inches ought to be outlined in at least two sections to enhance pivot life.

5. Explore different avenues regarding Thickness

The thickness of the pivot will change how firm or messy the pivot feels to work. You may need to explore different avenues regarding more than one thickness to discover what best fits your outline.

6. Introduction Affects Strength

Introduction of the plastic particles exceedingly influences the quality of the joint and importantly the pivot quality; the long plastic atoms ought to be opposite to the pivot at whatever point conceivable. It is conceivable to make reasonable pivots with parallel introduction (on account of expulsion, for example) if your outline requires it, yet you won’t be amplifying the quality of your material.

While it’s useful to utilize the run of the mill polypropylene plan as a beginning stage, make a point to tailor this foundational configuration to your item’s particular needs. Living Hinge Design for Injection Molding

Injection Molding is the most grounded approach to fabricate living pivots and awesome for generation parts.

Best Material Option

Because of its strength and flexibility, polypropylene is the best material decision, infusion molding PP pivot can have a practically limitless administration life achieving a few million flexes.

Polyethylene is the second most regular living pivot material with comparable properties to polypropylene.

Configuration Tips

A standout amongst the most critical plan controls in infusion forming is to keep up uniform divider thickness. In uneven dividers, the distinctive rates of constriction amid cooling can cause remaining burdens, twisting and notwithstanding softening up your outline.

Be that as it may, when outlining a living pivot you really need to do the inverse by making non-uniform dividers, on the grounds that for the pivot to be adaptable it should be significantly more slender than the associating unbending part.

Potential issues can be diminished or settled totally on the off chance that you contemplate where the doors in the form will be put.

Note that quickly in the wake of trim, the pivot ought to be flexed a couple of times. This will cool draw the plastic, significantly expanding its administration life. A little-known technique that disentangles tooling adjustment is to begin with the level segment over the pivot having a profundity of no less than .015 inch and a pivot thickness of .006 inch”.

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.

Best 5 Types of Plastic Molding

Posted on April 24, 2017 by - Blog

In today’s assembling condition, plastics are being utilized to make everything from car body parts to human body parts. Every application requires an extraordinary assembling process that can form the part in light of specifications. This article gives a short preview of the diverse sorts of trim and their points of interest and applications.

Blow Molding – Well suited for empty articles, similar to bottles

The procedure takes after the fundamental strides found in glass blowing. A parison (warmed plastic mass, by and large a tube) is swelled via air. The air pushes the plastic against the form to frame the coveted shape. Once cooled, the plastic is launched out.

The blow shaping procedure is intended to make high volume, one-piece empty articles. In the event that you have to make heaps of containers, this is the procedure for you. Blow shaping makes exceptionally uniform, thin walled holders. What’s more, it can do this economically.

Compression Molding – Well suited for bigger articles like automobile parts

The name of this trim technique says everything. A warmed plastic material is set in a warmed form and is then compacted into shape. The plastic can be in mass however regularly comes in sheets. The warming procedure, called curing, insures the final part will maintain its integrity. Similarly as with other molding techniques, once the part has been formed, it is then expelled from the mold. In the event that sheeting plastic material is utilized, the material is initially trimmed in the shape before the part is evacuated.

This strategy for molding is extremely appropriate to high-quality mixes like thermosetting gums and also fiberglass and fortified plastics. The predominant quality properties of the materials utilized as a part of pressure embellishment make it a precious procedure for the car business.

Expulsion Molding – Well suited for long empty framed applications like tubing, pipes and straws

While other forms of molding uses extrusion to get the plastic resins into a mold, this process extrudes the melted plastic directly into a die. The die shape, not a mold, determines the shape of the final product. The extruded “tubing” is cooled and can be cut or rolled for shipment.

Injection molding – Well suited for amazing, high-volume part fabricating

Injection molding is by a wide margin the most flexible of all Injection molding procedures. The presses utilized as a part of this procedure change in size and are appraised in light of weight or tonnage. Bigger machines can Injection mold auto parts. Littler machines can deliver exceptionally exact plastic parts for surgical applications. Likewise, there are many sorts of plastic pitches and added substances that can be utilized as a part of the infusion forming process, expanding its adaptability for originators and designers.

The process itself is fairly straightforward; however, there are many enhancements and customization techniques that can be used to produce the desired finish and structure. Injection molds, which are usually made from steel, contain cavities that will form the parts. Melted plastic is injected into the mold, filling the cavities. The mold is cooled, and the parts are ejected by pins. This process is similar to a jello mold which is filled then cooled to create the final product.

Custom Plastic Injection Molding

The form making costs in this strategy are moderately high; be that as it may, the cost per part is exceptionally lower. Low part cost alongside resin and finish alternatives have all added to Injection Molding ‘s ubiquity in today’s assembling scene.

Rotational Molding (Rotomolding)– Well suited for expansive, empty, one-piece parts.

This procedure utilizes high temperatures and rotational development to coat within the shape and frame the part. The steady turn of the shape makes radiating power framing even-walled items. Since it is in a perfect world suited to extensive empty compartments, for example, tanks, it is not a quick moving procedure. Be that as it may, it is an extremely sparing procedure for specific applications and can be less expensive than different sorts of embellishment. Next to no material is squandered utilizing this procedure, and abundance material can regularly be re-utilized, making it a sparing and ecologically reasonable assembling process.

Conclusion

Each sort of molding has its qualities and shortcomings. Designers and specialists need to comprehend these distinctions and the generation alternatives accessible. There are constantly a few ways to deal with a last assembling arrangement. The molding organization who counsels on a particular venture ought to have the capacity to give extra experiences into the applications and materials that are most appropriate to an individual venture.

How to Choose the Proper Plastic

Posted on March 28, 2017 by - Blog

If you’re looking to become a plastic molder, the two main things you should consider are your plastic injection molds and the materials you’ll use to create parts. Before setting out to have your mold designed and made by Quality Mold Shop, you should consider the purpose of the part you plan to create.

Choosing the Right Plastic for the Right Job

Different plastics have different properties, making some more suitable for certain jobs than others. If you take a look around you, noticing different things made from plastic, you’ll notice how similar plastics are always used to make similar products.

Your laptop case, for instance, will always be made from a hard plastic rather than a soft one. If you examine the properties of the plastic used to make laptop cases, you’ll notice that the plastic doesn’t really give way or bend easily. It’s hard, yet it’s durable enough to not break or crack easily if it gets a light knock. The lid on your lunch box, on the other hand, isn’t hard like that. It’s a soft plastic that easily bends and gives way. This can help it to stretch a little over the lunch box container, creating a stronger seal.

If you used a hard plastic to make a lunch box lid, it wouldn’t stay on the container as securely. And if you used a soft, bendable plastic to make a laptop case, it wouldn’t protect the hardware inside the computer from light knocks.

In both cases the plastic used was picked carefully based on the function of the part that’s being made. This is what makes plastic such a popular material for manufacturing, its versatile. But that versatility comes in the form of different polymers. After looking into plastic injection molding and different types of plastics available, you’ll see that laptop cases are most often made of plastics like ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), while lunch box lids are made from materials like polyethylene.

Practical Considerations

Of course the ultimate function of a molded plastic part will be an important consideration when choosing the right polymer for the job. But how will you know what factors to consider in order to choose a plastic with the right properties?

Here are some of the practical things to consider when choosing what material to use for your plastic parts.

Price

Some polymers are just more expensive than others, so the market value of your final product will have a big impact on your choice of polymer. The raw material could cost you anywhere from less than a dollar per pound, to as much as $50 dollars if you need a specialty material. So obviously the possible price fluctuation is huge.

And it goes without saying that you simply can’t use a polymer that costs $50 per pound as a raw material, if your final product will requires a pound, but will only cost $40. That’s an oversimplified example, but it drives home the point that cost is vitally important when choosing what plastic to use.

Durability

Some products don’t need to be very durable at all, while other products are expected to last as long as a lifetime. You’ll know how durable you expect your product to be before having a mold made, and so you should choose a plastic that can live up to these expectations.

People don’t expect disposable plastic cutlery to be particularly durable, but a reusable plastic cup should be made of plastic that won’t easily crack like its disposable counterpart.

Another essential part of choosing a durable material is its resistance to temperature. A simple plastic like polyethylene isn’t very temperature resistant. So while it’s a good plastic for everyday objects, it won’t perform well under somewhat more extreme temperatures. While hot conditions isn’t good for the material, cold conditions also negatively affect its plasticity. Meaning that a part made from polyethylene can actually break or shatter below freezing point, losing its ability to flex.

Part Design

The shape of the part you want to make will influence the polymer you choose. Simple shapes can be made using almost any polymer, but if the part you want to mold will have more holes, depressions, ribs and gussets, you have to pick your polymer more carefully. Not all plastics can be as easily shaped as others.

And while aesthetics isn’t necessarily the most important thing to consider, it’s also something that will influence your decision. Getting a plastic with high gloss, or one that will be good for making a part with a matt effect might be important to you.

Flexibility

Some parts are meant to be able to bend a lot without cracking, while others are made not to bend. It goes without saying that any part that will have to flex a lot, should be made from a plastic that can handle this kind of tension without snapping and breaking. But some parts are meant to stay securely in place under pressure without flexing or giving way, and these parts should be made from harder, yet durable plastics.

The best way to know what plastics will be a good fit for your project is to talk to professionals. Follow the advice from both the engineers working to make your molds, and a chemical engineer. After all, the best way to get it right the first time is to not base your choices on guessing games, but to rely on sound professional advice.

Want to know how to source automotive plastics? Looking for a plastic molder?

How to Design the Perfect Plastic Part

Posted on March 13, 2017 by - Blog

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.

What is the World’s Strongest Plastic?

Posted on February 7, 2017 by - Blog

What is the World’s Strongest Plastic?

Defining what the strongest plastic is, isn’t as cut and dry as you might think. But know what the “strongest” plastic is, based on a few things, can help you decide what plastics you may need for your plastic injection molding prototype.

It’s a simplistic question, possibly even naive. Put it to a chemical engineer or a materials scientist, and she or he will almost certainly not come back with a single answer.
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Injection Molding Machine Tending

Posted on February 2, 2017 by - Blog

Injection Molding Machine Tending

Many companies have made the change to have robotics tending machines over a worker. Is there more of a reason aside from increasing profits? Robotics is something we rely on so heavily in today’s world, they make things we do better.

Since machine tending is not specific to CNC machines, we thought it would be great idea to look at some other manufacturing tasks that can be done using machine tending, like, injection molding.
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Metals That Can Be Molded Like Plastics

Posted on January 31, 2017 by - Blog

Metals That Can Be Molded Like Plastics

We are used to plastics taking the places of things that were made from metal, but not normally the other way around. Metals that are more malleable like plastics exist though they aren’t used as often as you might think.

Many solids can exist in either a crystalline or a glassy state. If a molten material is frozen quickly, the atoms or molecules have less time to settle into an orderly arrangement before they’re out of energy, and have to freeze where they are. The resulting solid is more likely to be glassy. If frozen slowly, however, the atoms or molecules can find their “proper” places and settle into a regular structure. The resulting solid is more likely to be crystalline.
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