Injection moulding and everything you need to know
When choosing the right production method for your plastic products, it can be hard to decide where to start and what’s best for you. There are many advantages of injection moulding, so, we wanted to give you an overview at what these are…
Prototype tooling or sampling
If you have a product you want to develop, first we can do a 3D print to establish if there are any problems with the design. Then we’d be able to manufacture a soft tool which could mould between 100 to 1,000 samples to help us iron out any further problems before production tools are manufactured.
We can offer efficient, high production components
Once we‘ve manufactured the mould tools, the process can be extremely fast for products with thin wall sections – with cycle times as short as 10 seconds. It’s excellent for medium and high-volume production runs for anything from 1,000 parts to multi-impression tools producing in excess of a million.
There’s a low cost per part
The initial tool manufacture and running costs are very low compared to other methods of manufacture. Most jobs can run ‘fully automatic’ without an operator and with minimal supervision required. This is especially the case for high output production runs where the cost per part is very low.
We can manufacturer identical products repeatedly…
This is ideal when you need to have parts with high tolerances and reliability across high volumes.
There’s a huge range of material choice available
There‘s a huge range of plastic materials that you can chose from depending on what properties you need for your final part.
There are also thousands of grades of plastic to choose from, too.
You can even use fillers such as glass, talc or graphite in the moulding material, which adds greater strength to the completed part, and you have a huge range of colours to choose from as well.
Our team of experts are available to talk to you about what you need your part to achieve – as there are generally several different options available.
Two-shot moulding
Two different materials can be moulded together as seen on toothbrushes or screwdriver handles where there is a softer grade of material moulded on top of a harder grade. This is ideal where a moulding has a seal assembled and this operation can be all done in one moulding cycle.
Injection moulding is one of the most environmentally friendly manufacturing methods
Despite all the bad press about plastics, injection moulding is one of the most environmentally friendly manufacturing methods available. All modern injection moulding machines are incredibly efficient and power resourceful. The actual process itself ensures only the required amount of plastic is used – there’s no waste in the production process itself and any scrap or rejected parts can be granulated and re-used in the production process.
Injection moulding produces very little waste when compared to many other manufacturing processes. Even if there’s any unused or waste plastic, it can be recycled for future use.
We can add high detail to mouldings
The process involves injecting molten plastic into the mould tool under very high pressure. This presses the plastic hard up against the moulds allowing complex, intricate shapes and a lot of detail can be added to your design.
What happens after moulding?
Generally, you’ll need very little post-production work as the parts look great aesthetically. We can produce the mould tool with a special finish or texture which will show straight away on the moulded part. You can even have your logo or text engraved on it.
We can also offer assembly of your components. This can either be inserts added, parts welded together using sonic welding, printing, or foam inserts adding.
And if you do require a finish to increase the perceived value of your product our long-established collaboration with our coating and printing partner allows us to offer an all-inclusive range of fully managed finishing services to deliver a complete end-to-end solution, including a far-reaching variety of colours that can be applied to a comprehensive range of engineering polymers and can be tailored to meet your specific requirements; blending decorative finishes seamlessly with functional properties.
Precision moulding
Plastic Injection moulding is such an accurate method of manufacturing that almost any type of component can be made in this way. The mould tools that are made allow the finished injection moulded product to be extremely accurate and precise, more so than in any other field of manufacture.
Want to know more? Get in touch…
To find out more about the advantages of plastic injection moulding and our services here at Barkley Plastics, take a look around our website www.barkley.co.uk or give our friendly team a call on 0121 440 1303.