Injection Molding Design Guide

Guide for high quality and cost-effective plastic injection molding.

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Materials

Design

Processes

Units

Formulas

Math
Gravity Casting
  • Production Rate: Three shots each day.
  • Simple gravity resin insertion lends simplicity, but voids can easily form since there is no pressure.
  • Cheap and quick.
The urethane can be gravity-flowed into the mold. This is easy to implement, but not all thin-wall areas are likely to fill. Gravity casting is demonstrated in the last of series of SRM figures.
Vacuum Casting Molding
  • Production Rate: 15-25 parts each week.
  • Vacuum costs money and takes tooling time.
  • Parts are of higher quality than with Gravity Casting, with thinner walls and fewer voids.
  • Materials can simulate ABS, Nylon, Polycarbonate, etc.
VCM involves using a vacuum jacket on the mold and injection pressure to fill thin-wall areas. The figure below illustrates the vacuum configuration, which is similar to the vacuum jacket used for injection or transfer molds.
 
Thin Wall Rim
  • Production Rate: 3-4 each hour.
  • Tooling Cost: About $3000 for a typical consumer product part of 5"x5"x3"(12.7x12.7x7.6 cm).

  • Accuracy: As accurate as the SLA prototype: ±0.005" (±0.127 mm).

  • Mold Fabrication Time: 10 days from pattern to first part.
The Thin Wall Rim method can produce copies of RP patterns at about three or four per hour. Short cycle time is due to the fast gel time (one minute) of the polyurethanes used. They can be de-molded after about 10 min.

 
Automated mixing heads have helped because of the following:
  1. The two-part resin is automatically mixed in a vacuum.
  2. The material is shot into the mold.
  3. Parts coated with hardened polyurethane are disposable.
These automatic injection heads have come down in price, increasing the popularity of auto mixing. Equipment that handles fast-curing resins can now run only $4000. Fast curing resins also lengthen soft mold life, since the curing process is a major reason for mold break down. Before automated mixing heads, the two parts of the resin needed to be mixed, then de-gassed in a vacuum, and then finally poured into an injector for insertion into the mold. Since these steps were time-consuming, it was impractical to shoot materials that had pot lives of less than a few minutes.
Glossary
FREE Publications
Injection Molding Design Guide

Guide for high quality and cost-effective plastic injection molding.

STEM Career Outlook

Wages, employment opportunities, and growth projections for STEM jobs.

Selecting the Right 3D Printer

Discover how to choose the right 3D printer for your needs and the key performance attributes to consider.

CNC Machining Design Guide

Optimize your designs, reduce machining time, and lower your costs.

more publications