A fully described plastic part is the most crucial information for a mold build project. An incomplete part drawing can create countless problems in the mold design process, waste a lot of precious time and cause numerous issues when the mold is completed and commissioned at the customer’s facility. Spending extra time at the beginning [...]
While creating the plastic part drawing, the designer has the best opportunity to decide on the most suitable design for the mold and/or to make suggestions on how the product design might be modified to improve productivity and simplify the mold design; in turn, simplifying the mold design reduces mold costs. Once the mold design [...]
Blow molds are used to produce many items that we use every day, such as drinking bottles (food and beverage industry), perfume bottles (cosmetic industry), bottles and containers for medicines (pharmaceutical industry), or bottles and containers for creams or other care products (household and care industries). The various materials used for the final products require [...]
The reasons for a high-gloss finish in plastic molding vary. Some examples include extreme transparency of the molded part, reduced localized corrosion or highly crack-sensitive tooling (due to design or operational stresses). Then there is the impact of mold surface finish on injection molding productivity, as the release forces of the plastic part from the [...]
Automotive headlight housings have evolved from round, stamped steel assemblies to thermoset parabolic reflectors with diamond-like angles, covered with clear lenses. Today‘s BMC (bulk molding compound) reflectors are cosmetic parts with complex curves and shapes. Their parabolic surfaces are the aiming mechanisms for the light. With the move to clear lenses, any imperfections in the [...]
Overmolding is an injection molding process used to mold one plastic (commonly a rubber-like plastic called TPE) over top of another component (substrate). The substrate is usually an injection-molded plastic part, but it could also be made from various other materials. Overmolding is used across several industries and serves a wide array of purposes. Below [...]
Over the past decade, soft-touch overmolding has radically changed the look, feel, and function of a broad range of consumer products. Abundant new color, texture, and tactile options are available in such products as toothbrushes, razors, power tools, cameras, kitchen items, hand-held electronics, and auto-interior parts. Driving this change is the increasingly diverse range of [...]
Traditionally drawings have been an indispensable and unambiguous definition of the finished product—a vital part of the service agreement between the customer and those responsible for tooling and inspection. Unfortunately, for many shops, 3D models are still only a supplement to the official authority of the drawing. However, a growing number of companies involved in [...]
Injection molders quote or estimate a job based on six primary factors: part weight, material cost, machine size, cycle time, labor requirements and packaging. The material and packaging costs are relatively easy to obtain from suppliers, which makes them fixed values—not estimates. Thanks to solid modeling software programs, part weight is also a fixed value, [...]
It seems there are a lot of classes and programs available that you can earn the title of ‘expert’ in a few short weeks or months. While that may work for a some jobs, a mold designer needs to have a substantially more experience to earn the reputation on an expert. If you’ve ever wondered [...]