Plastic injection moulding is a manufacturing process that contributes to innovation in new product design across different industries. Due to its many benefits including efficiency, precision, versatility and the ability to produce complex geometry parts at speed, plastic injection moulding is a popular choice for manufacturers in high-tech industries such as automotive, electronics and medical. Additional advantages include consistency, a reduction in waste, lightweighting and a wide selection of polymers that offer attractive functional characteristics such as durability, flexibility and resistance to harsh chemicals and heat.
Due to these many benefits, plastic injection moulding has a low cost per unit and is a very cost-effective manufacturing process for volume production of plastic parts. There can, however, be considerable upfront costs such as, tooling design and fabrication and, depending on the project, the need for specialised or advanced materials.
Although, with careful planning, and by working with an experienced and knowledgeable plastic injection moulder, the benefits of plastic injection moulding will far outweigh your short-term costs.
Here are some top tips for managing the costs of your injection moulding project.
1. Choose the right plastic injection moulder
Working with a plastic injection moulding company that has proven experience in your industry is critical. Breadth of experience in terms of the range of projects is important but a deep understanding of your industry, your manufacturing requirements and the validation needs you will have, is all added value knowledge that shouldn’t be underestimated.
A partner that has both the breadth of experience and a deep knowledge of your industry, is one that will offer consultancy and be able to navigate you through the most efficient and cost-effective route. The third layer to saving cost by choosing the right partner, is the scope that the plastic injection moulder has. If they can do everything under one roof, from design and tooling to assembly, validation and packing, this will save a lot of time and cost.
2. Optimise your product and tool design
When designing for plastic injection moulding, you can save costs by simplifying the geometry of your product design, reducing the number of component features or the number of processes required. This includes looking at ways to reduce the number of undercuts, tight tolerances and multi-shot materials required or using family moulds, multi-cavity tools or a modular tool design with inserts to simplify and optimise your tooling.
Modular tool design can increase lead times for production parts which should be weighed against initial tool cost savings.
3. Be open-minded about material choice
Choose your materials wisely. Seek advice from your plastic injection moulder. They will know what materials will give the desired end result to your plastic parts, meeting both your functional and aesthetic requirements. An experienced plastic injection moulding company will have a materials specialist who will know if you have over specified your choice of material and will suggest a more cost-effective option.
Likewise, if the material is challenging to work with and could cause problems during manufacture, such as PPSU or PEEK, they will do a cost-benefit analysis and potentially seek an alternative solution. Finally, they may suggest a change of colour if they think a transparent or white material could cause quality issues.
4. Reduce cycle time
One of the processes that takes the most time is mould cooling. To save time and improve efficiency the cooling system should be optimised and the product design reviewed to see where wall thickness can be reduced. This saves time and reduces the amount of material used. There are many other ways that products can be improved as every part has unique characteristics.
Many of the jobs that are involved in the plastic injection moulding process can also be automated to speed up production and reduce costs. Using 6-axis robots, for example, to demould parts and put together complex assemblies that have small parts requiring repeatable precision or using automated cells with robots and vision systems for checking quality, picking out scrap and removing sprue.
5. Volume production
Longer production runs will produce the most cost-effective plastic parts per unit. Automation of processes becomes easier to justify with high volume production. After the initial outlay of cost, automation delivers both time and cost saving benefits.
The art of cost-effective plastic injection moulding: OGM’s expert approach to quality and efficiency
OGM has been working with manufacturers in high-tech industries for over 60 years. Over that time, we have helped bring a large number of new product innovations to the market quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively. We have worked with innovative start-ups as well as partnering with large multi-national corporations in the medical, electronic, automotive and general industry and are proud to have some very loyal, longstanding customers.
Because we have everything from design to assembly and packing under one roof at both of our sites in the UK, we have experts at each stage of the plastic injection moulding process ready to advise and, where possible, improve and streamline the process for our customers. We were early adopters of automation at our innovation centre in Oxford and our volume manufacturing site in Wales. OGM is never standing still and always strives to be at the forefront of moulding innovation.
OGM can help you achieve cost savings and tailor the plastic injection moulding process to meet your specific needs without compromising the quality of the product. Contact us to learn more.