Techno-Labo is a company which supports the development of plastic products by design, mechanical engineering, prototyping, and low volume production.
We recommend manufacturing with steel mold in the case production volume is more than 500 sets or a product require special material like super engineering plastic.
We do not manufacture steel mold by our self, but we are sure that we can make it more reasonable than you order it directly to some vendors because:
・We have the know-how to select an ideal mold
・Placed many orders to each vendor based on their specialty and establish a strong relationship
・Capable of making drawings of the molds in-house understand manufacturing cost, and negotiation with mold manufacturers.
There are various methods to manufacture plastic products: injection molding, blow molding, extrusion molding, vacuum molding, and so on.
Here explains injection molding, which is a common method to make cases.
Molding pressure varies in each material. In the case of ABS, the pressure is 200 to 300 kilograms per 1 cm. Therefore, the molds are designed with high durability. The material is steel not to be deformed. It also requires precise machining because a tiny warping could shorten the life cycle of mold. It costs incredibly high to meet these considerations.
Nonetheless, you can reduce the cost of mold by relaxing above conditions, like production volume. Unlike normal molds that are made of steel, we call it substitute molds or simplified molds.
Basically, it consists of the cavity side and core side. If the product applies draft like a pudding, it is automatically ejected when the molds open. However, some complicated components require a slide mechanism that utilizes the movement of mold to eject the product.
It takes a few tens of seconds to cool molten resins. To improve productivity, sometimes the mold is designed with multi-cavity or composite. Design efforts improve the value of molds, and a unit price of the product can be lowered.
