Product customization is an ultimate opportunity to cater to your clients without altering your production chain significantly. Small changes mean the world to clients when those changes are personal. Engraving products or altering the color of a component make the product feel special to the client – and they are when made to order through manufacturing customization.
The question is how to offer product customization for your plastic products without disrupting your manufacturing and logistics solutions. Fortunately, plastic is both the easiest to customize and to alter the mold plans quickly with each order. Will you work with multiple suppliers? Build a customizable manufacturing sequence, or handle the customization by hand?
Start with modest custom features. The best way to apply personalized details is in-line with your production. Choose one detail, maybe two, to customize about the object – or printed from a standard template in the chosen size. Manufacture with equipment that can apply a programmatic variable feature. Laser etching and label printing can both adapt to the programmed content with each product – the device itself doesn’t have to print the same image every time. This introduces the possibility of product customization and, therefore, an opportunity for your customers to make special requests without interrupting the manufacturing process.
Build Engraving Into the Pipeline
Engraving a product requires a single step in your manufacturing process. You can now perform engraving through several mediums in a method much like printing. Words or images can be entered into the machine and the pattern will appear engraved on the product(s). Include an engraving device in your pipeline, and you can offer custom engraving of your products – without an unnecessary two-step interruption.
With this, your clients can have their products engraved. Initials, inscriptions, or simple images are an elegant addition to many products.
Product Differences by Product Diversity
Another approach is through a variance of suppliers and vendors. If you sell a product that comes in a few designs, colors, or styles, you can offer a fuller selection by sourcing from more than one manufacturer. For more extreme variance between products, you may even require different supplies to offer a selection. Rods of different lengths, for example, or sourcing different colored components from separate suppliers.
Alternate Color Injection Molding
Injection molding can often include more than one nozzle, material, and/or color to make an entire item. The item begins building from the core and molded layer after layer by injecting plastic in a predetermined model. You can use this method to create batches of items in a selection of colors or made-to-order manufacturing, calling on separate injection molding nozzles to print alternate color and material products on demand – depending on the design of your injection molding equipment.
Print Special Edition Labels
Label printing is another opportunity to customize without complicating the process. Labels are printed through a programmable system, not typesetting, so you can customize labels easily in batches or for a singular product. Traditionally, product label customization has been limited to marketing campaigns and product variation. However, you can offer special edition labels, labels for events and weddings, joke labels, or labels bearing initials and other formal personalization.
Laser Engraving and Custom Image Printing
Along similar lines, laser printing and plastic image printing can customize your products on the fly. Customers can choose their favorite image or even upload an image to print on their item. You can supply design elements for customers to build their own images, like trophy and plaque engraving design, where a little guidance produces a more satisfying end-product. These variations are easy to accommodate with modern laser engraving and plastic printing as part of your manufacturing chain.
Staying Profitable with Product Customization
Finally, remember to monitor the profitability of the customization. The smaller changes in your manufacturing process, the better, as this minimizes the cost of changing components, changing molds, or adding a manufacturing step.
There is certainly profit to be found from offering personalization on popular items. Just be sure that your revenue from personalization and detail selection outweighs the cost of diversified manufacturing.
How do you create custom plastic parts?
Propose a design / Pick a resin / Choose the manufacturing process
Create a prototype / List your part specifications / Manufacture the custom part
If you’re new to the business of creating plastic products, you may be wondering how to create custom plastic parts.
Manufacturing custom plastic parts for any application is a lengthy step-by-step process. There is a certain sequence of events that needs to be followed to properly design and produce your custom plastic parts. There are also plenty of factors, techniques, and trends to consider in the world of plastics.
Want to learn more? This article walks you through the key steps in creating custom plastic parts, and some of the key challenges you’ll encounter during the process. Read on!
Propose a Design
If you’re interested in making custom parts, you’ll likely already have a design idea in your head. If so, start your design process by making a sketch. Make sure all the important parts of your idea are visible and detailed.
If you’re unable to adequately sketch your idea, you can also have someone else draw it for you. Note that the clearer and more detailed the sketch is, the better.
Once you have a sketch, you can have an engineer create a 3D model of your proposed custom part using a 3D software program. At this point, there will be a lot of trial and error as you notice flaws in your design.
At this stage, you should consult with someone well-versed in plastic part engineering. They will be able to determine if your design is fit for manufacturing and if it will fulfill the intended function. Feedback will help you improve your design further.
Plastic molding began in the late 1800’s to fill the need for plastic billiard balls as opposed to the commonly used ivory billiard balls of the time. In 1868, John Wesley Hyatt invented a way to make billiard balls by injecting celluloid into a mold. Four years later, Hyatt and his brother invented and patented a machine to automate the process. This was the first plastic injection molding machine in existence and it used a basic plunger to inject plastic into a mold through a heated cylinder.
In 1946, the screw injection molding machine was invented by James Hendry, which replaced the plunger injection technique. This is the technique most commonly used today.
Modern rotational molding also has a rich history beginning in 1855 when rotation and heat were used to produce metal artillery shells in Britain.
Plastics were introduced into the process in the early 1950’s, when rotational molding was first used to manufacture doll heads. And then in the 1960’s the modern process of rotational molding that allows us to create large hollow containers with low-density polyethylene was developed. In recent history, process improvements, better equipment, and plastic powder developments have sped up the process of creating finished products which has caused rotational molding to grow rapidly in popularity.
How do you create custom plastic parts?
Propose a design / Pick a resin / Choose the manufacturing process / Create a prototype / List your part specifications / Manufacture the custom part
If you’re new to the business of creating plastic products, you may be wondering how to create custom plastic parts.
Manufacturing custom plastic parts for any application is a lengthy step-by-step process. There is a certain sequence of events that needs to be followed to properly design and produce your custom plastic parts. There are also plenty of factors, techniques, and trends to consider in the world of plastics.
Want to learn more? This article walks you through the key steps in creating custom plastic parts, and some of the key challenges you’ll encounter during the process. Read on!
Propose a Design
If you’re interested in making custom parts, you’ll likely already have a design idea in your head. If so, start your design process by making a sketch. Make sure all the important parts of your idea are visible and detailed.
If you’re unable to adequately sketch your idea, you can also have someone else draw it for you. Note that the clearer and more detailed the sketch is, the better.
Once you have a sketch, you can have an engineer create a 3D model of your proposed custom part using a 3D software program. At this point, there will be a lot of trial and error as you notice flaws in your design.
At this stage, you should consult with someone well-versed in plastic part engineering. They will be able to determine if your design is fit for manufacturing and if it will fulfill the intended function. Feedback will help you improve your design further.
There are several means by which plastics are created and fabricated, and then there are the means behind how they can produce the plastics outside of just the craton. Every product has a priority that must be met, so to make this happen, they all must be fabricated for these different jobs. Here is a guide to the processes of custom plastic fabrication to better develop how plastics have changed our lives.
Processing Through Molding
When working with plastic, it doesn’t start out as plastic at all. In fact, it starts out as a by-product of petroleum. When oil is being produced, a resin is left over as a by-product, and from that same resin, we are able to extract the material and form it to create what we know as plastics. There are several ways we form plastics depending on the chemical makeup and density of these plastic materials, and these are those methods.
Injection Molding
With this method, the resin is literally injected via a large syringe into a mold while in liquid form, and it fills the mold and sits in place until it hardens. Once it hardens, it is taken out of the mold, and you are left with the piece that you wanted to create. This is a great way of achieving a perfect piece every time with die-cast molds. A great example of this is custom acrylics fabrication. If you’ve ever noticed just how perfect plastic pieces are shaped, this is why. It is especially important in the industrial sector, where plastics are used for gears and tools in the manufacturing industries, where these same pieces go into mechanics and need to be fitted perfectly in order to work correctly.
Vacuum Molding
This method is an interesting method. It is used for high detailed pieces with very intricate molds. The resin is vacuumed into the mold with such force that it folds over the mold and creates whatever it was molded to. Then the mold is removed, and you are left with your newly formed piece that will be used for whatever it was created to be used for. While injection molding is for more solid pieces that have less detail, vacuum molding catches every crease and dot. All of the imperfections to create something truly marvelous and perfected like a chiseled piece of artwork.
Blow Molding
This design process is made for the more specific pieces, most of which are hollowed in the center. It makes sense for bottles and bags, cups and bowls; anything that has an opening would suggest that the piece is blow molded. These molds are important to plastic manufacturing, equally as much as any other, as they all have different roles that they carry with them.
Thermoforming
A particular set of plastics are made for this process and can only be used for this process alone. When making products, they have to be stamped and labeled because this particular type of plastic can be reverse engineered. This is the only kind of plastic that can be reduced to oil or recycled, depending on the need. These plastics are in demand as recycling has finally caught on globally, and thermoforming has made its way into mainstream culture. It’s now cooled to recycle because so many now understand the benefit and the state of the world as it stands right now.
Choosing the Right Process
There are different factors that all go into how and why plastics are made, as they can’t all just be dialed up and produced all at once. First, there has to be a demand for them, but what is even more important is the ethic behind why they are being produced, which means that there is a priority that must be met first. Things such as the form type, materials used, the cost and volume of the product creation, and the time are all intertwined and have everything to do with how and why we produce plastics the way that we do, from an ethical perspective.
Form
As discussed before, the form must be decided on based upon the demand for it. If more solids are needed or hollowed pieces, then whichever has the higher demand gets decided on. Of course, there is a demand for all of them, but depending on which has the highest rate and volume is how it’s determined which to make first and at what rate to meet those needs.
Material
This is a huge component of plastic generation as all plastics are not made equal. As we said before, not all plastics are able to be recycled, so they can’t be thermoformed unless they are recyclable. They have to be a part of a very specific entity of plastics available. So, the most imperative thing you can do when building anything with plastics is to know which plastic to use for your project and outcome. If you know the details and characteristics of that plastic, you will be much better off with whatever you choose to use it for.
Cost Vs. Volume
The prices that are set can fluctuate at any time, depending on the market. This also effects how the volume will increase and decrease, so it’s all weighing on each other, and that’s why these things have to be evaluated daily
Product customization is an ultimate opportunity to cater to your clients without altering your production chain significantly. Small changes mean the world to clients when those changes are personal. Engraving products or altering the color of a component make the product feel special to the client – and they are when made to order through manufacturing customization.
The question is how to offer product customization for your plastic products without disrupting your manufacturing and logistics solutions. Fortunately, plastic is both the easiest to customize and to alter the mold plans quickly with each order. Will you work with multiple suppliers? Build a customizable manufacturing sequence, or handle the customization by hand?
Start with modest custom features. The best way to apply personalized details is in-line with your production. Choose one detail, maybe two, to customize about the object – or printed from a standard template in the chosen size. Manufacture with equipment that can apply a programmatic variable feature. Laser etching and label printing can both adapt to the programmed content with each product – the device itself doesn’t have to print the same image every time. This introduces the possibility of product customization and, therefore, an opportunity for your customers to make special requests without interrupting the manufacturing process.
Build Engraving Into the Pipeline
Engraving a product requires a single step in your manufacturing process. You can now perform engraving through several mediums in a method much like printing. Words or images can be entered into the machine and the pattern will appear engraved on the product(s). Include an engraving device in your pipeline, and you can offer custom engraving of your products – without an unnecessary two-step interruption.
With this, your clients can have their products engraved. Initials, inscriptions, or simple images are an elegant addition to many products.
Product Differences by Product Diversity
Another approach is through a variance of suppliers and vendors. If you sell a product that comes in a few designs, colors, or styles, you can offer a fuller selection by sourcing from more than one manufacturer. For more extreme variance between products, you may even require different supplies to offer a selection. Rods of different lengths, for example, or sourcing different colored components from separate suppliers.
Alternate Color Injection Molding
Injection molding can often include more than one nozzle, material, and/or color to make an entire item. The item begins building from the core and molded layer after layer by injecting plastic in a predetermined model. You can use this method to create batches of items in a selection of colors or made-to-order manufacturing, calling on separate injection molding nozzles to print alternate color and material products on demand – depending on the design of your injection molding equipment.
Print Special Edition Labels
Label printing is another opportunity to customize without complicating the process. Labels are printed through a programmable system, not typesetting, so you can customize labels easily in batches or for a singular product. Traditionally, product label customization has been limited to marketing campaigns and product variation. However, you can offer special edition labels, labels for events and weddings, joke labels, or labels bearing initials and other formal personalization.
Laser Engraving and Custom Image Printing
Along similar lines, laser printing and plastic image printing can customize your products on the fly. Customers can choose their favorite image or even upload an image to print on their item. You can supply design elements for customers to build their own images, like trophy and plaque engraving design, where a little guidance produces a more satisfying end-product. These variations are easy to accommodate with modern laser engraving and plastic printing as part of your manufacturing chain.
Staying Profitable with Product Customization
Finally, remember to monitor the profitability of the customization. The smaller changes in your manufacturing process, the better, as this minimizes the cost of changing components, changing molds, or adding a manufacturing step.
There is certainly profit to be found from offering personalization on popular items. Just be sure that your revenue from personalization and detail selection outweighs the cost of diversified manufacturing.