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3 Helpful Tips for Designing Injection Molded Plastic Parts
Injection molding is an essential process for almost every manufacturing industry, and it’s no wonder why. With versatility and fast manufacturing times, it’s the clear winner for part fabrication. Read on to learn three helpful tips for designing injection molded plastic parts so that you can enjoy efficient production runs and high-quality products.
Understand the Process
The single best thing you can do before designing an injection molded part is to learn the process. This will help you proceed with the necessary steps in mind, which alone can take you a long way. So how does the process work? First, the manufacturer makes a mold in two halves based on a negative of the part. When the mold comes together, they inject liquified plastic into it and let it cool.
Once the plastic cools, they pull the mold apart in two halves to release the part. What does that tell us about part design? For one thing, there must be a location for the material’s injection, called the gate. You also need to consider the slight shrinkage of the plastic as it cools.
Use Draft
Draft is the slight angle of the mold. Picture an ice cube tray. If you purchased a cheap tray from the dollar store, you might think of perfectly square ice cubes. These ice cubes would be difficult to pop out since they don’t use draft. Most ice cube trays have slightly tapered cavities, which make it easy to extract the cubes.
You should consider draft when designing your piece. A few degrees of taper can make it much less of a hassle to get your piece out of the mold when it cools.
Use the Right Materials
Material selection is a crucial part of the process. It can affect your part’s shrinkage, flexibility, and cooling time. For example, we make our plastic pipe plugs out of LDPE for high flexibility, impact resistance, and temperature resistance. Work with Polymer Molding to decide the best material for your part.
Now that you know these three helpful tips for designing injection molded plastic parts, you can build your next product efficiently and enjoy high-quality parts.