What are the facts to note about plastic injection molding?
Plastic injection molding can consistently produce thousands and even millions of plastic products for consumer goods manufacturers, packaging companies, aftermarket suppliers, and OEMs. Plastic injection molding helps produce a wide range of products that vary in composition, complexity, and size. Application is repeatable, and the process is reliable enough to be used for HVAC, commercial filtration, and automotive to markets like medical, garden, lawn, and appliance. Given below are a few facts to note about plastic injection molding.
The way plastic injection molding works
After an engineer has designed a part, a toolmaker crafts the metal mold out of aluminum or steel. The mold can have one or more cavities in Plastic Mould Manufacturing, which are precision made to create the desired part. Mold and part design are precise to the extent of a tight tolerance of +/- 0.001 inches.
Several polymers, like elastomers, thermosets, and thermoplastics, are used for plastic injection molding. Granules or pellets of the chosen material get heated in a barrel of the injection molding machine until this mixture is pliant enough to get injected in the mold.
A screw or ram type of plunger forces the correct shot of materials for filling the cavities under pressure till the two parts of this mold get clamped together tightly. The material gets cooled and takes the shape of that part. It gets removed by opening the mold to start the process once more.
The advantages of plastic injection molding
Plastic injection molding is able to create a high volume of high-quality and consistent units, but that is not the sole reason for the popularity of this process. It helps in complicated metal to plastic transformations by lowering part costs and reducing machining operations in a single process of molding. Plastic parts are lighter than the cast metal or machined parts. Moreover, corrosion is not an issue when plastic is used in place of metal.
Plastic injection molding lets greater designing freedom for the parts as these allow the inclusion of soft edge areas which need extra machining at added costs in metal parts. One more element in designing freedom is the ability to create detailed parts having intricate geometry. As the plastic gets pushed in the mold under pressure, it completely fills the cavity and gets pressed against the molds a lot harder than other processes. The plastic is able to conform to the tiniest intricacies and details in the mold in Plastic Mould Manufacturing.
Plastic injection molding ensures that there is no wastage of materials because the scrap plastic that is left can be reused by re-grounding. So, all in all, it is a highly viable procedure.