6 tips for controlling injection mold costs

As an injection mold manufacturer, it is very important to effectively control the cost of injection molds. So how do you reduce costs? In order to control the cost of injection mold, it is necessary to analyze the influence of various factors that affect the cost.

Plastic parts optimization design

I'm sure many people would disagree with me. Is the design of plastic parts reasonable, which is the biggest factor affecting the cost of injection molds? But let's think about it, if the design of plastic parts is not reasonable, it will be a disaster for the mold business. I've been working. Over 40 years of injection mold manufacturing, I've experienced more of this. Sometimes in order to achieve the buckle, but the plastic parts engineer and the mold designer do not have good communication, the cost of injection mold will increase exponentially.

Therefore, plastic parts designers must strive to understand the knowledge of injection molds and design plastic parts for molds as much as possible without increasing the cost and difficulty of manufacturing molds. Good communication is the most effective and direct measure to reduce the cost of injection molds. Some plastic parts engineers think that the cost of the mold is the business of the mold company. But what happens if the injection molding company and the mold manufacturing company are the same? In fact, it's a social trend. The company is currently operating better, is one of the injection molding companies and mold manufacturing companies. A single company can hardly survive. Therefore, if the design of plastic parts is not reasonable, it will directly increase the cost of injection molds.

Plastic parts design modification

Injection mold companies often encounter such a situation: in a project, the injection mold has just been designed, but the customer has some changes. If it is a small modification, it does not affect the overall structure of the injection mold, it does not matter. Sometimes the situation is more serious, because if the shape of the plastic part changes, the injection mold needs to add other parts, and even the entire injection mold must be reordered. The cost will increase significantly. Therefore, we must reduce design modifications. There are many rapid prototyping technologies available. Before making the injection mold, we can make a 3D module. By correcting the product 3D module in time, the cost increase caused by the design modification of plastic parts can be minimized.

Injection mold design improvement

There are two cases here, one is the rationality and processability of injection mold design.

In general injection mold manufacturing companies, the design team of course has the most experienced designers and young engineers. We can't ask young engineers to design high level molds. For experienced injection mold engineers, without communication, they cannot design a perfect injection mold. Collective review is one of the most important and effective methods. Now I believe we all agree. There are a variety of simulation methods such as mold flow analysis, mold structure dynamic analysis, trial-production products and product design 3D comparative analysis, which can minimize the unreasonable cost increase in injection mold design.

The second case is waste of design. If the customer only needs the injection mold to produce 500 samples, but we have designed a mold with 300,000 capacity, in this case, the cost will be high, which is a waste.

Reduce trial time

Many injection mold manufacturing companies calculate mold processing costs from receiving orders to shipping. If the injection mold has several test runs but still cannot be delivered, in addition to the contract failure, it will lead to more processing fees. Of course, the cost of testing is also considerable, and the uncontrollable injection mold test time is a big blind spot in mold cost control.