Injection moulding has a number of advantages. It is a cost effective, highly repeatable way of producing plastic parts with high precision. Once set up, it can produce a huge amount of parts per hour from a wide range of different plastics plus other materials such as liquid silicone rubber.
Like any manufacturing process it does have some disadvantages and if these prove important then you may be better exploring alternative technologies such as 3D printing or CNC machining.
Here we will take you through the main advantages and explore when it may be better for you to consider another option.
Injection moulding advantages:
1. Efficient high production
Once you have developed the moulds, the process is extremely fast with cycle times as short as 10 seconds. It is excellent for medium and high-volume production runs for anything from 10,000 parts to well over 100,000 depending on what moulds you use.
Sometimes you can increase production by using a multi cavity or family mould where several parts are produced from one press to further increase the manufacturing rate.
If you are outsourcing your plastic injection moulding then it’s also important to consider an efficient front-end design and order process – take a look at our on demand production.
2. Low cost per part
For high output production runs the cost per part is very low. Even for medium volumes – in the range of 10,000 to 25,000 parts, you can keep the costs down by using aluminium moulds instead of steel.
3. Repeatability
You can manufacturer identical products over and over again. This is ideal when you need to have parts with high tolerances and reliability across high volumes.
4. Large material choice
There is a huge range of plastic materials that you can select from depending on what properties you need from your final part. And you are not limited to plastic, Protolabs also offers liquid silicone rubber moulding.
You can even use fillers 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. Talk to us about what you need your part to achieve – there are generally a number of different options.
5. Low waste
Injection moulding produces very little waste when compared to many other manufacturing processes. Even if there is any unused or waste plastic, you can recycle it for future use.
6. High detail
The process involves injecting molten plastic into the mould under very high pressure. This presses the plastic hard up against the moulds allowing complex and intricate shapes plus a lot of detail.
7. Little or no post processing
Generally, you will need very little post production as the parts usually have good aesthetics post production. We can produce the injection moulding tool with a special finish which will show straight away on the moulded part. You can even have your logo or text engraved on it.