Prototyping as Part of the Plastic Injection Mold Design Process

It can be tempting to design your product and its constituent parts completely in-house, but there is a critical step between your ideas and the end consumer: the manufacturing process. While plastic injection molding can produce a large number of parts at lower costs, the quality of the injection mold denotes the quality of your parts. Learn how you need to start early with manufacturers for the plastic injection mold design process, and how prototyping and other assessments can make better and cheaper parts.

Your Working Part Design Isn’t Ready for a Mold

At Midstate Mold, our extensive experience spanning over 60 years means we’ve seen part designs in every stage and format. Those part designers and engineers who have never worked with an injection molder or been involved in the plastic injection mold design process often turn over CAD files of a part that will work great for their product, but suffer some of the following drawbacks:

• Higher Defects: Certain part designs and features can increase the chance of or almost guarantee certain part defects during manufacture.
• Poor Plastics Fit: If you’ve got your eyes set on a specific polymer for your product, you need to design your piece around its specific needs, from melt temp to viscosity.
• Inefficient Design: When it comes to part design, every unnecessary gram of plastic that can be removed or simplified adds cost efficiency with every production cycle.
• Costly Redesigns: All of the above, without the advice of a mold design company, can lead to having to create or modify molds, a lengthy and costly process.

Working Early with Plastic Injection Mold Designers

The best advice we can provide is that you should be working early in the part design process with a manufacturer. One of the common issues we encounter is part prototypes brought to us with end-user design choices rather than manufacturing practicalities. While it’s important to have a product with a great user experience, often these can result in a product that’s wasteful, inefficient, or problem-causing from a manufacturing standpoint. Working with a manufacturer before you’ve become committed to the design of a product creates a better product that is easier to make.`

Rapid Part and Mold Prototyping During Mold Design

The solution is to prototype the mold design alongside the part design, allowing both to be updated as changing needs and design requirements arise. During the plastic injection mold design process, multiple projects can be progressed simultaneously, including testing plastics to find the perfect fit, assessing and modifying part and mold geometry for more efficient parts and perfecting the placement of gates and undercuts to reduce and remove part defects.

Learn more in our blog, How Prototype Tooling in Injection Molding Accelerates Production.

We here at Midstate Mold are ready to help you transform your part into an injection molding part with rapid part prototyping, best-in-class mold designs, and expertise in SolidWorks CAD for modeling. With our considerable experience as both a mold designer and parts manufacturer, we not only understand all aspects of injection molding, but can also help you produce better parts right here in the US. Contact us today to get started.