Injection Molding - Design Your Product for Manufacturing 

Wow, thanks! Glad it was insightful!

Wow! Thank you Mike!

Thank you so much for saying that! Cheers!

Thank you!!

Interesting you mentioned ceramic molds which is something I discovered recently.

Hello CME. Is there any chance you could create a custom mould that I could send to manufacturers over seas? I have a picture of the design. Would you be willing to do that for a cost?

@@savannahroos2314 Normally I don't conduct business via youtube, but I can certainly help evaluate a better course of action to see if/what you need done needs that route. What are you trying to achieve? Me personally, I do short run molds for composite work that typically result in a dozen or so copies with very specific use cases. Again, depending on what you're trying to do, there's a decent chance you can get something made domestically if not in your own home for pennies compared to what a manufacturer is going to charge. Sending something overseas typically goes with just a design, and your chosen manufacturer will charge for the mold, do the production run, then charge you a separate fee if you want the mold shipped with your parts.

The problem is then you need a separate mold for the cover which adds a lot more cost. Most designs can be done without need for side actions, you just have to sometimes get creative. Thanks for commenting!

lifters or slides are very costly@@PredictableDesigns

SLA prototypes can be a better choice for getting customer feedback. But it still has a different feel and performance than injected plastic. But I always encourage getting prototypes in the hands of customers sooner than you think. My first prototypes for my product I presented to customers were SLA printed.

You're welcome! Most of my experience is with molding rigid plastics versus flexible silicone. But the uniform wall thickness rules prevents warping during cooling which should be critical to silicone too. Inside my Hardware Academy we have a great mechanical engineer who could answer this better than I can since I'm an electrical engineer.

@@PredictableDesigns Good to know! Thanks for your reply.

Thank you Nicholas, always appreciate the feedback!

Well it depends on the number of units and the acceptable quality. If you are looking for a moderate number of units (let's say a thousand or more), then using aluminum molds is your best option. These are much cheaper than steel molds and typically cost around $2k for each mold. The total cost though depends on how many custom pieces of plastic you need since each will likely require it's own separate mold. However, you do have the option of what is called a "family mold" which is a single mold with multiple cavities each for a different part. They do have limitations such as the fact that all of the pieces have to use similar amounts of plastic. If you can get all of your parts into a single family mold you will save a lot of money. Protolabs.com and ICOmold.com are two companies that do aluminum molds. If you are looking more at a couple hundred units, and the final production quality isn't quite as critical, then you could use what is called urethane casting which uses soft silicone molds instead of metal. These cost only a few hundred dollars, but they have to use urethane which won't match the final production plastic quality. Finally, if you can do so, using an off-the-shelf enclosure is the way to lower your risk the most and simplify your life. You can either buy standard box-like enclosures, or you could find a manufacturer making an existing product with a similar enclosure, and then approach them to see if you can buy just the enclosure. Hope this helps.

@@PredictableDesigns Thanks John. That's very informative!

You do for production.

@@PredictableDesigns now you can make part with better quality using sls tech and good materials like nylon or C p12 ' and the result is the same and better is depends on the materials you use .

Thank you! Although I think additive processes like 3D printing are the future of plastics manufacturing we're not quite there yet for most products. It is very challenging to compete with injection molding on per unit pricing especially as the production volumes get really high. You may enjoy this podcast interview I did with an expert where we discuss 3D printing for mass manufacturing: predictabledesigns.com/episode-14-additive-manufacturing-with-steve-szymeczek-of-penumbra-engineering/