Injection molding is the process that is used to produce parts by injecting a certain kind of material into a mold. It can be used with various different kinds of materials like glasses, elastomers and confections but the main material it is used with is thermoplastic. These are known as plastic injection molding products.
How is injection molding done?/strong>
The product is first designed by in industrial designer and then the mold is made from metal like steel or aluminum. After this is done, the material for the product is poured into a barrel that has been heated up. It is then mixed and fed into a mold cavity. Here is where it cools and hardens in the shape of the cavity or mold. This method is used for small components to large ones like the entire body of a car. 3D technology has proved to be very useful in injection molding.
What are some plastic injection molding products?
Injection molding is used to create a lot of things like wire spool, automotive parts, musical instruments and more but plastic injection molding specifically usually sticks to things like storage containers like pharmaceutical container supplies, bottle caps and sometimes chairs, tables and mechanical parts. If there is a need for a high volume of the same time of object then injection molding is what is typically used because once the cavity or mold is designed, it can spit out the exact same product every single time.
What are the characteristics of the process?
The method typically used a plunger type of ram to force the melted plastic in to a cavity in order to crate a product in the shape of the mold. Thermoplastic products are extremely common for the injection method. Thermoplastics are very conducive to injection molding because they are easily recycled and can be used in a wide variety of industries. Injection molding typically has to use a high pressure injection so that the material will go into the mold to shape the polymer into the proper shape. Molds can either be just the one cavity or several. If there are several cavities, the options are wide open; you could have identical cavities to form the same parts in a quicker amount of time or each cavity could be unique in its shape in order to form several different shapes in one cycle. Steel is probably the best material that molds are made out of. Aluminum is common but it is not conducive to making a lot of products at once because it more prone to wear and tear or even deformation and damage during the process.
Is the process expensive?
When making plastic injection molding products, the cost really depends on how many molds and cavities there are. Less cavities mean less tooling work so this in turn means less costs to build the actual injection mold. Another factor is how complex the product is. Plastic injection molding products can be simple or complicated and things such as finishing, tolerance, threads and fine details all need to be taken in account when determining cost. The surface finish of the core and any features that require more tooling will play a part as well. So, to answer if the process is expensive or not is a difficult question because it really depends on what you are making. It is really not a yes or no answer. What can be said, is that it’s worth it. There are so many different types of things that can be made in the injection molding process. Everything from day to day items like toothbrushes to products that you and I have probably never even heard of but play a vital part in our manufacturing industry.
There are many things about the process that are extremely beneficial to the way our industries run and so it makes the cost worth the time. Without the molding process, there would need to be some other method and since they have been able to find an efficient and well functioning technique, there is no reason to look further. There is only a need to better the process that is already being used in order to make it even more cost effective and efficient.
