By Peter Fong Posted on May 4th, 2015
So you have a great idea or invention for your product? The next stage is to make it into reality. In this post, I’d like to share 3 steps to get your plastic molded part ready.
Step 1: Hire an “experienced” product designer.
You can hire a product designer at your company or just outsource one. However, it would be more efficient if the designer knows molding process fox example, injection molding. If not, you are recommended to send the design to a mold maker for reviewing after it is completed.
Why? Because your design may not fit in actual molding process. The most common problem are undercuts which can not be moldable. When you finish the whole product design, it would be a tons of changes waiting for you: like PCB, cable holes, and other assembly parts.
So send your design to the mold maker to review is necessary. They can check manufacturability for the part, and provide a suggestion of part optimization. Then you re-design your part for a lower mold cost or easy production solution.
Step 2: Decide all the part details like material, color & surface finish at the beginning.
At Plastopia, we’ve encountered many cases that the customers wanted to change the part details after the molded parts were made. For example, a customer first chooses ABS plastic, After he got the ABS molded part, he found out Nylon would be the best for the application.
This is not recommended, as once the material is changed, so as the plastic shrinkage rate and part dimension.
Step 3: Test the part design using prototypes.
The prototypes could be done with CNC Machining or 3D printing. Neither way you choose, it is essential to do this especially when your part design is complete new. With a prototype, you can check the part geometry, assembly, color, and effects of surface finish.
Below is an example: a camera protoytpe used by a Japanese customer to check his design.
