Plastic Injection Molding Design Guide

Plastic injection molding is the primary process for manufacturing plastic parts. Plastic is known to be a very versatile and economical material that is used in many applications. Although the tooling is expensive, the cost per part is very low. Complex geometries are possible and limited only to mold manufacturability. Your computer monitor, mouse and keyboard are injection molded plastics.

Injection molding involves taking plastic in the form of pellets or granules and heating this material until a melt is obtained. Then the melt is forced into a split-die chamber/mold where it is allowed to “cool” into the desired shape. The mold is then opened and the part is ejected, at which time the cycle is repeated.

Design Considerations

Part design should include draft features (angled surfaces) to facilitate removal from the mold. Depending surface length draft angles down to half a degree are reasonable. Typical draft angles should be about 1 too 2 degrees for part surfaces not exceeding 5 inches. Dimensional tolerance specification will govern the part cost and manufacturability. If you have a small region of the part that needs higher tolerances, say the location of a critical feature used for alignment. DO NOT specify tight tolerance, instead design and plan for post molding processes such as machining using “assembly intent” fixturing.
Wall Thickness

Wall thickness for thin parts such as a soda bottle or ball point pen ink inserts are quite possible and economical. Thick wall sections are possible as well. Uneven wall thickness present challenges to the plastic molder manufacturer. Designing your part with uniform walls and cross section will simplify manufacturing and costing. At wall intersection or “tees” sinking will occur. Thick walls cool slower and greater shrinking will occur. Thin walls cool faster as thus, less shrinkage.

Radii and Corners

Maintain uniform wall thickness at corners. External and internal radius should share the same center point . External radii = internal radii + wall thickness. The minimum radii should not be less than 1/4 minimum wall thickness. Design for radii to be 1/2 to 3/4 of the nominal wall thickness. When significant stress is present, design in larger radius as larger radius distributes stress uniformly.

Ribs

Ribs should be 1/2 to 2/3 of the nominal wall thickness and less than 3 times thickness in height. Taper of 1 deg. is typical. Note: excess thickness promotes shrinkage. Excess rib height combined with taper will produce thin sections requiring extra fill time at the mold .

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Make Fiberglass Molds For Full Size

Everything You Need To Know About How To Make Fiberglass Molds For Full Size And RC Model Cars, Boats, Planes

Build or Remanufacture Fiberglass
RC Boat Hulls, RC Car Bodies
or Full Size Car, Boat, Plane Parts
4 Comprehensive HOW TO MANUALS
ALL For The Price Of 1 Until The Deal Closes With The Publisher.
(Once the deal closes, you’ll only be able to purchase these manuals at large hobby shops in hard cover. WAIT AND YOU’LL PAY TWICE THE PRICE!)

Are there custom fiberglass model bodies or full size vehicle body parts you want to create on your own ? ? ? ? Now You Can!
MY MANUALS WILL SHOW YOU HOW!

Ever wish you could have that cool custom model or body part you’ve seen on TV?
NOW YOU CAN MAKE IT YOURSELF!

Would you like to walk away with the trophy for most original design or better yet . . . BEST IN SHOW?
WITH MY MANUALS ALL YOU NEED IS
YOUR IMAGINATION!

Have you ever thought about how much money you could make with your own body and body part design ideas?
OWNERS OF MY MANUALS ARE ALREADY MAKING MONEY WITH THEIR DESIGNS!

Now You Can Unlock The Secrets Of Making Molds With Fiberglass

With The Step By Step “How To” Fiberglass Manuals
Whether you want to learn fiberglass mold making to compliment your hobby or take building custom designed fiberglass parts to the next level . . . “YOUR HOBBY TURNED MONEY MAKING BUSINESS” . . . Whether you’re a beginner or current fiberglass (Trial & Error) enthusiast, these manuals will serve to educate you with everything you need know to become an expert at fiberglass mold making for models or full size vehicle custom parts. Whether You’re a Modeler or an RC Enthusiast’s Wanting The Best In:

→ RC Boat Hulls	→ RC Car Bodies
Or Want To Produce Parts For Full Size Vehicles, Like:
→ Hood Scoops	→ Fender Flairs
→ Spoilers	→ Ground Effects

You can do any of the above and more without having to go through untold hours of trial and error to become expert. It’s all in this set of manuals.

#1. The Main Manual:

To download A 10 Page FREE SAMPLE Of This Manual, Click HERE NOW!

The “Fiberglass Mold Making Manual” is complete with  47 Full Color Pictures of every step for the entire process, from making your mold plug through molding your creation, to your finished masterpiece.

There’s over 150 man hours that has gone into describing and illustrating how you can take any fiberglass project from an idea to your completed fiberglass masterpiece.

Making fiberglass molds is a wonderful skill to possess. Fiberglass mold making applications can be used by the hobbyist, automotive enthusiasts and artists alike.

Fiberglass is both light weight and strong. It resists heat, is completely water proof and can be molded into nearly any shape imaginable.

The key is to understand the concepts of what it takes to get from design to plug to finished product, in an easy to understand, intuitive, and simple process.

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Manuals are in a digital download format (Acrobat Reader .pdf E-Book format) and are Completely Interactive. Take your lap top to your shop or copy to your shop computer, and have point and click ease to instantly finding any section or picture you need to reference as you work.

Of course you can print out these manuals and have a complete page number referenced “Table Of Contents” and “Table Of Images Index” for quick reference.

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Meet the Author:

Hi, my name is Steven Jones,

I have over 20 years of experience in working with fiberglass and I have used the techniques described in these manuals for building the following:

Automotive:

• Front & Rear Fender Flairs for a 68 mustang
• Rear spoiler for 68 mustang
• Hood Scoop 68 mustang
• Tail light panel for 240Z
• Rear Spoiler for 240Z
• Hood Scoop for Jeep Grand Cherokee
• Custom Rear Signal Light Housing for Suzuki Hayabusa
• Rear Seat cowling for Honda Interceptor

Hobby:
R/C Boats:

• PBR scaled to fit GI Joe
• Nitro powered out rigger
• Hybrid out rigger / deep vee nitro powered boat
• Radio Box for boats
• 1/32 scale model of a 120′ yacht

R/C Cars:

• 1/6 scale six wheeled ATV
• 1/8 scale Mach 5 body for nitro powered chasis

R/C Planes:

• Cowlings for .40 and .60 size trainers

Other:

• Various water feature projects and other artistic endeavors

Building your own duplicate fiberglass molds or designing your own custom molds for Models, Car Parts, Radio Control cars, boats, planes and rockets, or even art work can be a ton of fun and extremely rewarding. . . .

. . . . I know it has been for me, and it can be for you too, without having to learn all the intricate techniques of fiberglass mold making on your own, through a frustrating and time consuming process of trial and error.

There is nothing like the feeling of taking your own vision, creating it yourself, and knowing it is one of a kind.

I wish you good glassing and good luck,

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Capabilities / Mold Design & Making

SANTO Precision Plastic Hardware Mould Co.,Ltd. has mold design capabilities and experience to provide their customers with cost effective tooling solutions. Our experience ranges from single cavity low volume production molds to high efficiency multi-cavity hot runner molds. The diversity of mold designs and materials that KemFlo people have experienced throughout the years can be drawn upon by our customer base.

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Modeling Mold and Product Design

Whether you have a new idea or are looking for an alternative to your current process let us put our team to work for you. Precision Industries’ experienced staff can provide product development, modeling, and complete design services to help turn your concept into reality.

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Mold Design

The mold design pictured above is one of two 2×4 stack molds designed for an outdoor yard component. This tool is approximately 42 x 66″ tall with a stack height of over 39″ and weighs over 12 tons. These tools were designed completely in solids using our state of the art SolidWorks software and the background experience of actually building molds. This unique combination of talents continually proves to be a catalyst to our success.

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Mold Design and Manufacturing

The success of your products, and your company, depends greatly on the efficiency and quality of your plastic injection mold. Pioneer Plastics is fortunate to have a state-of-the-art mold design and manufacturing facility to help with your mold design needs. From concept through tooling, our mold engineers utilize their experience and knowledge to help your business expand and succeed.

Our in-house design and machining services add value to your project in a variety of ways. We have experts in part design and development working side-by-side with mold manufacturers and repair technicians. Through the cooperation of our mold design team, we can ensure the fastest and most cost-effective plastic injection mold for your needs. If you have a project you would like to discuss with us, please feel free to contact us.

Posted in Mold Design, mold | 1 Comment »

Mold Design

All tooling design work is carried out in-house by an experienced design department, Using the latest design techniques and the most modern equipment, we can produce sophisticated new mold & tools, which are capable of producing the highest levels of quality & high production.

Our tools are made to last so that they go on working, continuously to the same exacting standards.We have the skills and the technology to turn your ideas into reality. But it is only by working together that we can produce the component best suited to your requirements, This is why we encourage you to call on our expertise at the earliest possible stage-the concept.

The quality of the tooling is vital and in both the design and manufacture of tools, we ensure total quality control through modern technology.

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Mold Design & Consultant

Our Mold Design & Engineering staff combines experience, imagination, and innovative industry practices to provide solutions to our customer’s satisfaction.

Our Design and Engineering services are inclusive of,

1. Product Design

2. Rapid Prototyping

3. Mold Design

4. Reverse Engineering & Laser Digitizing

5. Assembly Systems Design

6. Packaging Design

Our Engineering Facilities are,

1. CAD/CAM/CAE System

Pro-Engineer

AUTOCAD

MoldFlow Analysis

UG

Solidworks

Surfacer(Imagware for prototype sample)

2. Computer Hardware

Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® Processor Desktop

3. Media

CD/DVD ROM

Internet

Email

FTP

Memory Stick

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Injection Molding Basics for the Minimal Mold

An over view article on minimal injection molding
So you need to make a distinctively large quantity of plastic parts in your next robotics project. Should you simplify the design to save your self the trouble? There are several options available to you. Many of these fall into the categories of hand forming (heat & bend, file drill.), vacuum forming, conventional milling, CNC milling, injection molding, and sls stereo lithography categories. (lets face it, if you can afford stereo lithography, you can afford to just pay somebody else to make the parts for you.) The order these options is presented is not coincidental. Generally this is directly tied to the dollar value associated with each of the processies. But when and where are these monetary lines drawn? There are several factors to consider. Of coarse, money is a driving force, but how often do we undervalue our own time spent in manufacturing a piece for our robots. Sure it cost $5.00 in raw materials, but I then invested seventy hours over three weeks to manufacture the end product. Another consideration is that of repeatability. Will one piece be exactly the same as the next, or will I have to make special considerations for each piece in my design. The proceeding ideas represent decisions that we as robotics enthusiasts / hobbyists make normally in a subconscious manner. I present the following based on my recent decision to choose one of the fabrication techniques (Injection molding), which, aided by modern technology proved to be rather painless. Specifically, this tends to be the proverbial `path less chosen’ that I would urge more people to strongly investigate.
In choosing to injection mold the tractor tread pieces for my robot I was taking a large step towards reducing my overall project cost. Specifically, when accounting for my time in machining complex 3-D pieces, even worse, one hundred and forty four of them, one begins to look for other options. The argument proceeds that this is why we have CNC machining. The problem becomes more evident when you take into account the actual part geometry. The piece I dreamed of would require four separate setups in CNC machining and as further investigation proved require producing four separate sets of custom machined complex tooling fixtures to hold onto the part while machining it. So I decided that a injection mold would be the preferred method of part production.
Upon choosing this method of production, advice will flow in. `That technology is for large companies making tens of thousands of parts’, they’ll say. Not to discount this wonderful advice, in large part this is true, but not in the sense that it applies to the common robotics hobbyist. There are many small shops that are more than willing to do small production runs in molding that are willing and friendly enough to stop and help the little guys. Right here in West Seattle, I have had the good fortune to work with a small company called N.W. Shortline. Named after the old rail road line running through the area. As a matter of fact they make small production runs of specialized model train parts sold exclusively through external vendors and mail order. In other words they make a business of molding small plastic parts when only a hundred or so are needed. Exactly what we’re looking for.
Of molds, sprews, locating rings, return pins, ejector pins, cold well plugs, waterlines, pipe threads and a whole specialized industry which revolves around them. The terminology is overwhelming, but most of this applies to a full sized `production’ mold. We want simple, cheap and cost effective. The remainder of this article is dedicated to the minimums that one requires to get a small part manufactured.

Plates:
Simple molds can be made from as little as four pieces of material, yes I said four. Before one procedes to far make sure to contact your molder and find out the exact dimensions of the mold you need to make. (many of the different injection mold machines require different sized molds.) Specifically I found that I needed to produce a mold with outside dimensions of 2″x2″x3″. Right away, this defined the stock size for the geometry of two of the above mentioned four Pieces. These pieces form the A and B plates of the cavity. (fig. 1) In small production, the material of choice for mold production is generally aluminum 6061-T6 (<1000pcs)>

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Mold Design

Mold Design

A complete solution for mold design Solid Edge Mold Tooling is the cornerstone of a complete mold design solution that helps transform ideas into deliverable products faster and at lower cost by addressing challenges that are unique to the industry. Solid Edge helps both OEMs and dedicated mold shops overcome these challenges by combining industry-leading capabilities for data import, cleanup and shape modeling with a proven set of mold design automation tools, unparalleled documentation capabilities and seamless integration with best-in-class analysis and manufacturing solutions.

And Solid Edge is the first mold design solution to address the real source of bottlenecks – OEM/ supplier communications. Solid Edge’s industry-leading design management applications help you service your customers better by providing tools for managing design data, automating process workflows such as design reviews and enabling native view and markup of designs. Whether your customers are next door, or half way around the globe, improved communications mean minimized changes and reduced delivery times.

“With the addition of Solid Edge Mold Design to our existing Solid Edge software, we have been able to rapidly generate mold base components and document the whole process to our standards. We believe that the addition of Mold Design software will increase our productivity which in turn allows us to assist our customers to reduce their speed to market for new products. This improvement is key for the longer term growth and prosperity of both Camtech and the customer base we supply. Solid Edge Mold Design is an excellent design wizard for the Plastic Tooling industry”.

Roger Clark General Manager, Camtech Queensland, Australia

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