Nowadays, injection molding has become the most common method of manufacturing plastic parts, it is ideal for mass production.
Many things can be made by injection molding, such as buckle, packaging, bottle caps, automotive parts and components, toys, mechanical parts (including gears), components of medical products, one-piece chairs and small tables, storage containers, etc.
In order to facilitate the molding process, engineers must be very carefully to consider all molding conditions, below elements must be taken into account while designing:
1. The material that injected
2. The material of the mold
3. The desired shape and features of the part
4. The properties of the molding machine
How:
Heat the plastic material until it becomes fluid, deliver the molten material with plunger or screw to injection nozzle at the same time, and then inject the material into mold cavities, after the molded plastic article cooling down and curing, eject it out with ejector pin.
Advantages:
1. Can be used to manufacture plastic parts in complicated shape or different material
2. Suitable to be used for mass production because of the efficiency
3. Fine dimensional stability
4. Can be fully automatic
5. With less material wasted
Disadvantages:
1. Unavoidable results including parting line, ejector pin marks, or gate marks are usually present on the finish products
2. The cost of mold and equipment is high
3. The overall structure of the mold is complicated, thus it's not easy to do further processing
Notices:
The quality of the mold is one of the important parts during production, in order to have nice performance and benefit from the production, it is necessary to select suitable die steel.
Ideal die steel should have below features:
1. Easy to polished
2. Corrosion resistance
3. Crack resistance
4. Transcalent
5. Abrasion resistance
