Making your plastic parts a reality requires proactive, creative thinking and attention to detail during the design phase.
In order to produce a part that serves the intended purpose, is affordable to produce and meets our quality standards, we've had to develop some clever solutions.
View our plastic injection molding case studies
Plastic injection molding is a cost effective plastic part manufacturing process designed for high-volume production in order to achieve a low cost per part. It's the most common method for producing plastic parts today.
The injection molding process starts by heating tiny granules of plastic until they liquefy. Molten plastic is then injected into a multi-part mold that is held together with many tons of pressure. Once the liquid has cooled to form a part, the mold is opened and the newly formed part ejected. The molding process is generally run at a high number of cycles to mass-produce the plastic parts. While the tooling required to create a single mold can be costly, the price per part is generally very low due to high volume production.
Design of the plastic parts is inextricably tied to the nature of the production method; injecting molten plastic into split molds. Part design is impacted because the parts are produced with molds, which have unique nuances that must be considered when molding parts from molten plastic. For example, the plastic must flow into the mold through a "gate". Gates must be strategically located in the mold to allow for the uniform flow of molten plastic into the various mold cavities in order to ensure the structural integrity of the part. Parts must also be designed with angled surfaces, or draft features, to allow for easy removal from the mold. There is much more that goes into part design, such as material selection, surface finish, wall thickness and more. A small sample of the information available from our highly trained staff is available online through our Design Resource Center.
