Plastic mold industry
If you are planning to go into a plastic molds and molding business, you should first know the different processes. Choose from a plastic molding process that fits your budget, your expertise, and your resources. In Plastic Molding, melted plastic is forced into a mold cavity. Once cooled, the mold can be removed. This plastic molding process is commonly used in mass-production or prototyping of a product. Injection molding machines were made in the 1930’s. This can be used to mass produce toys, kitchen utensils, bottle caps, and cell phone stands to name a few. Plastic molding is a very technical process. It needs experts in this type of manufacturing business for it to be competitive in the market. Therefore, a very scientific and systematic study should be first made before going into this endeavor.
The process of plastic injecting involves using either polymer, or plastic. A barrel is heated and the granular polymer is fed into it. There is also another part of the process that involves rotating the barrel as a screw type plunger melts and mixes the polymer more. As the screw turns, its generates heat from the friction to aid the process.
The rotation of the screw forces the melted plastic into the mold to make the required shape. The mold will be cold, and may even have some channels running through it to help keep it cool. This will allow the melted polymer to solidify as soon as it fills the mold. When the polymer has solidified in required shape within the mold if can be removed from the mold. It will cool down further being left at room temperature.
Types of Polymer
In injection molding there are many different types of polymer used depending on the properties needed on the specific job. There are two different categories they are classified under:
Thermostat, and thermoplastic
Here is a list of the most commonly used polymer in Plastic Mold :
Plastic injection machines hold molds in place while the melted plastic is injected into the mold, filling the mold and producing the item.
The metric used to classify the injection machine is tonnage. The clamping force used by the machine to clamp onto the mold is determined by how much tonnage it uses. Depending on the size of the part and the materials used in the process, the tonnage can range from 10 to 5000 tones.
Two different types of injection machines are a single injection and double injection. Double injection machines operate with 2 screw plungers, nozzles, and hoppers.
Defective plastic injections
There are many defects that can happen with plastic injection molding due to the material and constraint properties.
Common defects include:
Flashes, flow marks, silver streaks, wrap, short mold, sink marks, weld lines, etc
With the higher quality processes available nowadays these types of defects are not so common. They can be avoided by using better quality materials, skilled individuals, and better-designed parts.
Plastic products have a wide range of uses in electrical, automotive, equipment, machinery, telecommunication products, and much more. It is estimated that around 80% of these products are manufactured from the injection molding process. Two of the main advantages of plastic products are that they have a relatively low cost, and can be produced in large quantities. Products can be made in either 2D or 3D using injection molding without too much difficulty. Products manufactured using injection molding has a high level of complexity, high precision, consistency, high production, good surface finishing, and a relatively low cost of production. There are no other types of production technology that offer all of these benefits. Today Plastic mold china is worldwide using