Plastic injection molding is not exactly easy to achieve for all products. While many manufacturers out there would love to use plastics to bring down production costs, is necessary to understand how this process works and why it’s suitable for certain specific items only.
When you take your design to the team that will handle production of your idea, they should be able to tell you why it can work and why it could fail. With this in mind always important to be able to sit down with them and discuss every detail regarding engineering, tooling and quality inspections. And special certification if it’s needed.
Just as you get familiar with the tooling process, a good team working with plastic injection molding procedures will keep you in the know about all the steps they are following to bring your design to life and make a finished product to your satisfaction. Here is a basic rundown of the steps they take as they begin to work on your design.
1. Setting up The Terms
After sitting down with the development team that will create the finished product using plastic injection molding a few aspects of logistic should come clear after the first meeting. The communication lines that will be used by both parties to send and receive reports, the timeline for getting the job done, the terms to review and approve the finished product and the total cost of the project.
2. Working on Development
At this stage, the team working the plastic injection molding process is very much aware of all the specs of your product and everything that is expected out of their work. They will create their mold and cast it. They will also work on all the additional tooling needed to create any additional parts related to your product. For every single step of the process, your approval will be requested to move forward to the next stage of production.
3. Production and Approval
Before getting to work on production another major sit-down must be held, you’ll have to review and approve the prototypes generated by the molding and tooling process. After that part is done, your product will be manufactured. As the process goes forward, they will send periodically finished samples of the product to test their quality and request further approval on any last minute changes. When the first batch of product is finished, they’ll have a testing phase to make sure the product meets your expectations.
4. Final Test Run and Shipment
A final sit-down is required to test the product for quality issues one last time, depending on the agreed schedule this could happen before entering production or during production (it rarely happens after production is finished). After you get a close inspection of the finished product, you can either request additional changes before production ends or approve the final design based on performance. The team will ship the units you requested of the product to your destination of choice, and the deal will be finished.