Plastic Injection Molding and Professional Design

Many businesses and companies use custom plastic parts for their packaging materials, product housings, cases and covers among other small components.

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What is Plastic Injection Molding For?

Injection molding is the primary technique used in the plastic manufacturing industry to produce such parts. When looking for custom plastic parts, a number of considerations must be looked into. It is also important to understand the plastic injection molding processes used and specific materials that make up the molded part. There are many reasons why businesses or individual clients may need custom parts ranging from patenting designs to a way of branding their business. These parts are made using high precision tools and processes to achieve consistency and efficiency in production.

Examples of plastics used
In plastic injection molding, specific types of thermoplastics and thermosetting polymers are used. These plastics are easy to melt, channel, mold and cool under high pressures. Some of the plastics commonly used for this type of injection molding include;
• Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene ABS
• Polystyrene GPRS
• Polypropylene PP
• Polycarbonate PC
• Nylon PA
Different plastics present varying properties and attributes. They are used for different components. Injection molding can also use elastomers, glass and confections.

The Molding Process

Plastic injection molding is used to produce a range of products that include small home-use tools and parts to large complex components. A special injection molding machine is used with a set of repetitive instructions to allow mass production and efficiency. Most modern machines feature computer control which relies on sensor-fed information to initiate machine action and molding. The process comprises material melting, channeling to molding tools and cooling. Machines can print a given single part or employ multiple impression techniques to produce different components of the entire product.

A typical plastic injection molding machine consists of a barrel equipped with reciprocating screw, runner channels and paths as well as a molding tool. The machine uses hydraulics to exert pressure and also inject these plastics. Injection material is loaded to the heating barrel via a hopper. Once the polymer has been heated, rotating screws basically maintain heat and crush non-fluid plastics before releasing it to flow along the runner channels. The final stage is cooling in the molding tool which provides desired impression. In order to allow quick production, the molding tool is made of non-stick smooth surfaces that leave desired impressions on the cooled component.  That's what plastic injection molding is in a nutshell

We will cover this more in a future article.

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Chandler, Arizona 85225
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