The term ‘Plastic’ comes from the word ‘Plastikos’ means ‘to mold’. There are two classification of plastic, ‘Thermoplastic’ and ‘Thermosets’. Both plastic types contain different physical and chemical properties. It’s easy to mold the plastic into amazing shape and size as well.
The plastic is a light-weighted material, strong, and durable with good insulation properties. It has good sustainable quality, which helps in reducing waste and recycling the plastic products.
Plastic Molding Design Process:
When it comes to product’s designing process, plastic molding takes place and the process of designing plastic molding products took into account. The plastic molding design process evolves the designing of high-quality molded plastic parts.
Different types of plastic molding including blow molding, rotational molding, injection molding, thermoforming molding etc. These types choose to work on the basis of the product’s requirements. The mold designer experts in plastic parts design and specialized in the above-mentioned plastic molding types to build a mold using different technologies. It takes place before production.
Mold designers construct plastic molds using Computer-aided Design (CAD) and Computer-aided Manufacturing (CAM) software programs for manufacturing the plastic products. Molds designing software includes Unigraphics, AutoCAD, SolidWorks, and Pro-Engineer (Pro-E). Then, a mold takes into trial, ensuring accurate mold’s design on the specification of the product’s design.
How do the Mold Designer Contribute to Plastic Molding:
Plastic Molded parts—designed and built by expert mold designer. They skilled in molds designing and manufacturing for making the final parts and components include:
- New parts development
- CNC setup
- Software design (AutoCAD, SolidWorks, Unigraphics etc)
- Mold flow analysis
- CAD/CAM program
- Expert in GD&T (Coordinate Measurement Machine)
- Expert in CMM (General Dimensioning and Tolerating)
- CAD Designing for Plastic Mold:
Injection molding is one of the most recognizable, simple, and popular go-to manufacturing process. CAD programs allow the designer to visualize 3d technology in manufacturing. It works great with injection molding methods, including prototyping and 3d printing.
- 3d Printing and Prototyping for Making Plastic Mold:
3d printer is great for prototypes and custom injection molds. The 3d printing and prototyping take place during mold design development process.
After the designing process, the structure of the mold milled with CNC machining. It maintains tight tolerance, reduces shrinkage, and control the smooth finishing of the parts during production.
Process of Plastic Molding:
When it comes to manufacturing, the designed and constructed molds take into the production for making the final finished products. This mold inserts into the molding machine according to the product’s needs and requirements.
Finalizing the setup, the plastic raw material feeds into the hopper of the machine. The raw plastics heat up at a high temperature, where it turns into liquid form. The screw in the machine pushes the molten plastic liquid into the mold. Inside the mold, the molten liquid starts to cool and harden at the cooling system of the machine. The designed mold ejects from the machine and the final finished parts come out strong from the mold.
These processes are cost-effective, producing a large volume of high-quality parts and components for areas of life.
