With recent advances in technology and product design, consumer expectations are at an all-time high across all industries. Quality has always been essential to a brand’s reputation, but with the rapid dissemination of information on the internet, it’s more important than ever to make sure your products perform and function at optimal levels. One way to ensure this is to choose the right manufacturing method for the parts and components that make up your product. Precision injection molding is one such method. But “precision” is a word that gets bandied around a lot in the injection molding industry. So what exactly denotes true precision injection molding and what does it look like for high-volume orders? Let’s find out.
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Precision injection molding is a specialized manufacturing process that focuses on producing highly accurate and consistent plastic components with tight tolerances. Industries that require intricate and exact parts—such as the medical device, electronics, high-end consumer, and automotive sectors—benefit greatly from precision injection molding.
In order to deliver precision molded parts, manufacturers often employ advanced machinery and techniques to control every aspect of the process, including temperature, pressure, and material flow. Precision injection molding also typically relies on the principles of scientific injection molding, which involves using data-driven approaches to optimize the process. With in-depth analysis and real-time insights, the process can be fine-tuned to meet the exact needs of unique and complex parts.
Precision injection molding encompasses a range of capabilities that enable the production of highly accurate plastic parts. Some of these capabilities include:
Precision injection molding is not just crucial for complex, high-tolerance components; it also plays a significant role in high-volume production of simpler parts and brings a number of benefits, including:
Even for simpler parts, maintaining consistent quality across thousands or millions of units is essential. Precision injection molding ensures that each part in a high-volume production run meets exact specifications, minimizing variability and defects.
High-volume production leverages economies of scale and precision injection molding can optimize material use and cycle times. Together, this results in a reduction of the overall production costs and helps ensure that the initial investment in high-quality molds pays off by minimizing scrap and rework.
Advanced precision molding machines are capable of high-speed cycles, which is critical for meeting the demands of high-volume orders. Faster cycle times without sacrificing quality lead to quicker turnarounds and higher throughput.
And finally, high-volume production benefits from the reliability and durability of precision molds, which are designed to withstand extended runs. This minimizes downtime that is often caused by mold maintenance or failure, which ensures a smoother production flow.
On a similar note, precision injection molding (like most other injection molding processes) are highly scalable, making it easy to ramp up production from prototype to full-scale manufacturing without compromising quality.
At Thogus, we offer high-volume injection molding services with a focus on precision and accuracy. As an Ohio-based manufacturer that has been around since the s, we’ve had the time to develop our skills and expand our capabilities to offer end-to-end solutions for a wide range of industries. Outside of our injection molding capabilities, we also offer material selection support, engineering support, assembly, and inventory management with JIT deliveries.
Once you have developed the molds, the process is extremely fast with cycle times as short as 10 seconds. It is excellent for medium and high-volume production runs for anything from 10,000 parts to well over 100,000 depending on what molds you use.
Sometimes you can increase production by using a multi cavity or family mold, where several parts are produced from one press to further increase the manufacturing rate.
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If you are outsourcing your molding then it’s also important to consider an efficient front-end design and order process – take a look at our on demand manufacturing.
There is a huge range of plastic materials that you can select from depending on what properties you need from your final part. And you are not limited to plastic, Protolabs also offers liquid silicone rubber molding.
You can even use fillers in the molding material, which adds greater strength to the completed part, and you have a huge range of colors to choose from as well. Talk to us about what you need your part to achieve – there are generally a number of different options.
If you are committing to steel mold tools for high production volumes (100,000+) then it can take a great deal of time and machining to produce and this can be a significant capital cost. If you need lower volumes of parts then this will affect your cost per part price and it may be worth exploring other options such as using aluminum molds instead.
It can take up to 12 weeks to produce steel tooling. If you need to get production running before this then take a look at our on-demand production; by using aluminum molds and digitizing our front-end process we can ship anything from 25 to 10,000+ parts in 15 working days or less from the point that you first upload your CAD. Sometimes parts shipped in as little as one day.
For very low production runs there are other technologies such as 3D printing or CNC machining which could provide a more cost-effective answer more quickly.
You will need to consider certain design elements, such as:
You also need to consider where to place your gates, ejectors and cooling lines if aesthetics are important. And remember it’s also hard to change the design of a mold – you can remove part of the mold, or add plastic to your final part, but not the other way round.
For smaller production runs, 3D printing allows you to design virtually any shape or geometry that you require. As a rapidly developing technology there is an increasing number of plastic and other materials, even metal, that we can produce.
Most people think that they should only turn to injection molding for orders of 100,000+ parts; but there are other options when you can use this process for smaller production runs.
Using more affordable aluminium molds and quick turnaround times (as fast as a day) our on-demand service helps keep your per part cost down. It is ideal for anything between 10,000 and 25,000 parts, but can help control costs for production runs even smaller than this.
For low production runs measured in the hundreds or less then it is also worth exploring other manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing and CNC machining. With these technologies the cost per part will be lower and you will not face the initial set up costs or lead times involved in producing molds.