Generally speaking, injection molding cost mainly includes labor cost, raw material cost, basic cost of factory expenditure and so on. As for how to control cost of plastic injection molding, today, Hafo Mould came to discuss with you what aspects of cost are relatively easy to control, some are more difficult to control, and control will affect quality instead. Here we will discuss how to control cost of injection molding cost. From point of view of process design to give you a specific analysis.
Rational Design of plastic injection molding
Whether product design is reasonable or not is actually most important factor affecting cost of plastic injection molding. There may be a lot of people will think that my statement is not very reasonable, so please imagine, if our plastic injection molding design is unreasonable, for mold injection companies, it may be a difficult problem to solve. Sometimes in order to achieve a buckle on the product, cost of die may also be doubled. Therefore, to a certain extent, the most direct and effective way to control cost of injection molding cost is to design die rationally.
Is Die Design Perfect?
There are two situations to analyze. The first one is rationality and machinability of die design.
In general, there must be old and experienced designers in design team and young engineers just coming out of school. We can not ask young engineers to design high-level plastic injection molding independently when they first come to mold injection companies. They are also experienced mould engineers. If moulds are built behind closed doors, they can not be perfect. There will certainly be some inconsiderate details. One of the most important and effective methods is collective review. I remember that I bought a German mould book in the 1970s, which seemed to be called 80 cases of advanced die structure or something. What influenced me most was process of making die mentioned in the book, which must undergo many collective reviews of die structure. This has had the greatest impact on my mold career and has really benefited a lot. Now I believe that there is a consensus on this issue. At present, there are many simulation methods, such as die flow analysis, dynamic analysis of die structure, 3D comparison and analysis of products tested and designed, which can minimize cost increase caused by unreasonable die design.
The second situation is waste of design. If mould user clearly wants to produce 500 samples, it is used to develop market. But if we design plastic injection molding according to life of 300,000 modules, cost will be large and it is a waste of design.
Purchase of mould materials and molded plastic parts
Choose stable and reputable suppliers. It would be a pity if there were problems in mould due to greedy and inexpensive purchase. In fact, there are many such cases. Although suppliers can be held accountable, the biggest loss is still mold injection companies and die users.
Minimizing number of die tests
Many mold injection companies calculate injection molding cost processing when they synthesize design cost of plastic injection molding, which is based on the days when moulds receive orders and leave factory when they are qualified. If moulds can not be delivered after many times of mould testing, the more days moulds are in mold injection companies, the more processing fees are. Of course, the cost of mould testing is also very considerable, so many or uncontrollable times of mould testing is a big blind area of mould cost control.
Design Change of Die and Mould Products
Mold injection companies often encounter such a situation. In a certain project, mould has just been designed, mould frame has just been ordered back, customer’s change notice comes. If a small change does not affect summary structure of mould, it does not matter. Sometimes situation is more serious, because shape of product changes, mould should be added to mechanism, or even mould frame should be re-ordered. Cost will increase greatly. Therefore, design changes should be minimized. Now there are many rapid prototyping methods. Before making die, hand panels are made according to 3D, vehicle assembly is carried out, and product 3D is corrected in time, which can minimize the cost increase caused by product design changes. I remember that I participated in research and development of Jeep Cherokee 213 in Beijing before. It’s hard to say whether cost is material cost or processing cost when I want to go to Beijing for trial assembly.
As above is way to control cost of plastic injection molding. Only by doing above can injection molding cost be controlled within a reasonable range. Hope that through today’s introduction can let you know more.
