How Much Does Injection Molding Cost

What Do You Want To Do

This is the most important question. You can make both ends meet if what you want to do is already available: for instance, plastic parts that are in the market or designs or molds that someone else has already made.

In Martins plastics, we can help you to reduce your budget or to make your project viable.

How Do You Inject Plastic Mold At Home

Home Plastic Injection Molding With an Epoxy Mold.

How Much Should You Produce

The final cost of the project will depend on the number of pieces being produced. Consider that a tiny piece mold can cost between 10,000 and 20,000 dollars. A bigger mold can cost up to 200,000 dollars.

Then if you want to manufacture a hundred pieces and the mold costs 10,000 dollars, each piece would cost you a hundred dollars without material and production costs. But, if you produce 100,000 pieces, the cost per piece reduces to 0.1 dollars.

A good recommendation is to think about the product final price . It should be ten times more than the cost of the mold. For example, if your mold costs 10,000 dollars, you should get incomes for 100,000 dollars at least from your product sales.

You need to give thought to material costs too. One kg of plastic costs one to six dollars, depending on the quality.

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Injection Molding Costs: The Best Way To Save Money In Manufacturing

Initially, injection molding costs can run higher than other manufacturing methods. This is mainly due to the upfront cost of creating a high-quality molding tool that will produce large quantities of molds. Once this molding tool has been made, the cost of manufacturing parts become very low to produce.

This article will explain all the different variables that go into injection molding manufacturing costs.

The Merits Of Building A Mold In The Us

The Rodon Group has been in this business long enough to have worked with, or attempted to work with, molds that were created in Asia . Many of these molds are not built to meet strict tolerances, since they dont have to be. As labor costs rise in China, this no longer becomes an affordable manufacturing process. In addition, molds made in other countries are made from lesser quality steel or aluminum. Again, this causes quality issues and shortens the life of the mold. Most high-production molders in this country use only the best stainless steel available for the mold base and cavities. They utilize the latest technology in CNC machining and have seasoned tool makers who know how to create molds that meet the highest performance standards. When sourcing companies, be sure to look for U.S. based manufacturers.

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Is 3d Printing As Strong As Injection Molding

Yes, injection molded parts are stronger than 3d printed parts. Usually, if we ship 3d printed parts to our US or other country customers, we use a wooden/plywood case to protect them during transportation. But if they are injection molded parts, usually no need to use wooden case but just hard paper carton.

Stack Height & Opening Stroke

Estimate the stack height of the mold and compare it with the minimum and maximum stack-height ratings of the machine. A mold that has a stack height less than the machines minimum closed daylight rating can easily be corrected by adding rails or risers to the back of the moving-platen clamp plate. Some molders have platen spacers available for their machines for this very purpose.

Conversely, assume you are quoting a single-cavity drink tumbler. The mold is relatively small, as is the projected area. But the stack height and the required mold-opening stroke are huge. If the molds stack height plus the required mold-opening stroke exceeds the machines rated maximum open daylight rating, or if the required mold-opening stroke exceeds the machines clamp-stroke rating, you have a problem. Three-plate, cam-action, stack and various other types of molds often require large opening strokes. For these reasons, the mold may need to go into a larger machine.

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Cost Factors Of Plastic Injection Molded Projects

Plastic injection molding is an extremely versatile production process, capable of simple or complex designs in a range of volumes with fast turnarounds. To begin, plastic material is melted and injected under pressure through runners into the mold cavities. Here, the melted plastic takes the form of the mold and cools into a solid, at which point it is ejected from the casing.

Injection-molded products and components are found in nearly every industry, thanks to the design flexibility, the speed at which high volumes can be produced and the range of materials from which to choose. This manufacturing method can create medical devices for hospitals, pharmaceutical, defense, safety and industrial applications.

Another major advantage of injection molding is the price it is often the most cost-efficient technique to manufacture parts, especially at higher volumes. There are still, however, many expenses to consider when using injection molding for your project.

How Much Does Plastic Injection Molding Cost?

When creating a product, injection molding cost factors are varied. However, the most significant percentage of plastic injection molding cost lies in the fabrication of the mold itself. Below, we will look at the options that influence the price of a mold and discuss other expenses to consider for your project.

Custom plastic molding cost factors include:

In addition to the above factors, your plastic injection molding cost would also include expense such as:

Learning These Factors Will Help Understand The Tooling Needed For Your Part Design

The most expensive asset to any OEM using injection molded products is their injection molding tool, so what factors are driving the cost? Tools can range from $15K if youre using a MUD Frame on a simple part to well over $500K+ when you get into large tonnage and complex geometry.

There are several micro factors that play a part in the overall tooling cost. We will focus on the ones that drive that cost up or if controlled can keep the cost down. Depending on how many tools you are building every year, this could result in a minimum savings of $10K within the initial build and even more savings within the first 1-2 years of production.

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Bringing Down The Cost Of Plastic Injection Mold

There are a few measures you can take to lower the cost of your mold. Note that this does not in any way mean cutting corners. Here we discuss the measures you can take to remove costs you do not need.

Avoid unnecessary product features

This is where during design, all stakeholders should get involved. Right from the concept stage. When trying to reduce the cost you can focus on basic and performance features. Some product features might be nice to have but do not contribute to market value. Removing this feature tends not to affect functionality or appeal. But leaving those features might add to cost. This brings down the profit margin. To communicate with your mold maker early in the stage to avoid unnecessary costs.

Aesthetic finishes and appearances

Features like gloss and texture might not be necessary for the success of a product. If it does not boost the appeal and translate to sales, you can ditch it. Often product designers are not aware of the cost of some aesthetic features. At best these tend to be excitement factors. The consumers might find them nice but will not affect their buying decision. Meanwhile, that fancy feature might have cost an extra $1000. So be aware of these seeming simple product features. This is because specific types of mold achieve a gloss or matte finish.

Size matters

Overmolding and Insert Molding

Injection Molding Production Cost

The cycle time can be broken down into the injection time, cooling time, and resetting time. By reducing any of these times, the production cost will be lowered. The injection time can be decreased by reducing the maximum wall thickness of the part and the part volume.

The cooling time is also decreased for lower wall thicknesses, as they require less time to cool all the way through. Several thermodynamic properties of the material also affect the cooling time. Lastly, the resetting time depends on the machine size and the part size.

A larger plastic part will require larger motions from the machine to open, close, and eject the part, and a larger machine requires more time to perform these operations.

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Material Choice And Part Weight

The plastic material selection you make for your plastic part is not only critical to the parts function, it also plays a huge role its cost to manufacture. Raw plastic material cost can range in price from $1 per pound to $25 per pound. So, care should be taken in plastic part design to minimize the weight of the part when possible.

Choosing the correct plastic type can also help achieve faster cycle times or production rates of your parts to reduce overall costs. For small parts the cost of the material has a small effect on the unit price and the production rate has a large effect. On larger heavier parts the cost of the material has a large effect on the unit price along with the production rate.

$ Material Part Cost = $ Plastic Material Price x Part Weight lbs

How Do Mold Features Affect The Final Costs

Mold features are dependent on the projects size, and they have effects on the final cost. For instance, single cavity molds used in low-volume production involve the use of lighter machines, smaller components, low tooling costs, and high cost per piece. In comparison, the multi-cavity molds, which are associated with high-volume production, heavier and more complex machines, bigger parts, high tooling costs, and leads to a low cost per piece.

However, it is best to opt for micro-molding, a highly specialized tool that is perfect for low scale production. Micromolding machines can inject a fraction of a gram with high precision as they have higher resolution feed options, resulting in even pressure distribution inside the cavity.

Micro molding demands extensive attention to packaging and quality management that can be viewed as secondary operations in conventional injection molding.

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Injection Molding Cost Overview

The table below highlights the cost associated with injection molding a hypothetical plastic item, such as a small enclosure of an electronic device, which makes the cost dynamics of injection molding easier to understand:

* Equipment costs are not calculated into the production costs in this example as the cost of these tools can be distributed among multiple projects. Purchasing a desktop injection molding machine and an SLA 3D printer allows businesses to get started with injection molding for less than $10,000.

The three scenarios in the table show the methods and the mold types that result in the lowest cost per part depending on the production volume.

In general, injection molding is the most efficient at higher volumes, as the costs then get distributed among thousands of parts. But even though the cost per part for low-volume injection molding is slightly higher, it is still substantially more affordable for low-volume production than other manufacturing methods.

Plastic Injection Molding: Process Product Examples And Costs

November 11, 2019 by

If you want to start a product manufacturing project, its not necessary to know everything about plastic injection molding. However, having a big picture of the manufacturing process and the most common promotional products, would help you to understand the best way this manufacturing process can help your business strategy.

This guide will help you to plan an initial budget for your entire project, but first, you have to know the different processes involved in the creation of a new plastic piece. Budget and time of fabrication are deeply related to the kind of product you want to fabricate, this implies understanding how things get done and the options you have to accomplish the result you want.

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Get Started With Rapid Injection Molding

While injection molding is traditionally considered a manufacturing process only for mass production due to its high tooling costs, leveraging 3D printing to fabricate injection molds empower you to use this process to produce high-quality and repeatable parts for prototyping and low-volume production.

Use 3D printed injection molds with both benchtop and industrial machines to efficiently and affordably produce hundreds to thousands of functional prototypes, parts to accelerate product development, reduce costs and lead times, and bring better products to market.

Cycle Time And Mold Cavities

Cycle time is a term used in our industry for both injection molding and CNC machining. In simple terms it is the amount of time required for a machine to complete one production cycle. The total injection molding cycle time is made up of the following steps:

• mold closing time
• mold opening time
• part ejection or take out time
• re-cycle time

So how does cycle time relate to part cost? Lets discuss the primary sources of the non-material related costs for injection molding.

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Labor Or Service Costs

The equipment associated with injection molding is generally self-regulating and relies on automation to get the job done. CNC machines, EDM machines, and 3D printers rely on the specifications of the CAD design to produce a mold. The injection molding machine also relies on automation to inject materials into the mold, and industrial IM machines often cool and eject the finished item autonomously.

Labor costs include:

• Setup/configuration cost: The setup labor focuses on the time taken to configure the utilized equipment to produce the mold and the finished product.

• Repair cost: Repair and maintenance tasks involve the replacement of defective parts and the use of tools to execute the maintenance process.

• Monitoring costs: Despite the reliance on automation, equipment operators are expected to monitor the progress of the injection molding process. Operator wages accrued during the process are added to the total cost of injection molding.

When producing in-house, these costs are calculated into the labor costs. When a business outsources injection molding, the labor and the markup of the service provider are added to the service cost.

The Materials Used To Make The Mold Are Quite Costly

The materials used for making the mold have to be high grade, hence their expensive cost. This is because the injection molding requires thousands of pounds of pressure to make the plastic pellets, and a weak mold cannot withstand such pressure. Thus, machinists make the mold out of solid materials that can stand the test of time and not deform in the face of such high pressure.

The mold base contributes to the high cost of molding.

The base is like a case holding all the mold cavities in place. It also holds the inserts and other components of the mold together. The bigger the size of the mold, the costlier the base.

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Mold Inspection : How Much It Costs And When To Get One

When buying a new home, you should consider getting a mold inspection. Mold inspection is a different process from typical housing inspections. The cost will vary depending on the size of the house. How much does mold inspection cost on a home? How do you know if it is it worth it to conduct mold inspection and testing?

There are a few different situations in which you might want a mold inspection. Let us look at when a mold inspection is needed, what mold testing does and the average cost.

Will The Mold Maker Give Me Accurate Numbers

They may overbid each cost a little, but not too much

You may wonder are these numbers accurate? How do I know the mold makers are so honest that they do not overrate the costs?

True, the mold maker will want to get a higher profit than what they claim. At the same time, they are not sure about the accuracy of each cost, so they will put some room in their calculations.

However, I do not mean they are all dishonest. Many of them will try to give you a close cost estimation, partly, it is because of the competition they are facing. You will always to ask several mold makers to quote your project, so you can compare them to see if each cost is calculated correctly.

Some costs are difficult to be predicted precisely beforehand

First of all, the material cost is quite transparent, in most cases, they will tell you exactly what it is. Usually, it should be no more than 5% of the real cost.

It will be less accurate when it comes to the machining cost, it is usually a rough estimation based on their experience. It is hard to predict the exact machining time needed to accomplish each process precisely, in order not to quote a price lower than the actual costs that are going to incur, they will put some safe room into it. It is quite often that they will quote you 10~20% more than the real cost.

However, it is also possible that they underbid the prices sometimes. It means the mold maker will have less profit on this job than he earlier expected.

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