Tight Tolerance & Complex Plastic Injection Molding
Close Tolerance, Complex Plastic Injection Molding
Successfully producing highly accurate injection molded plastic components requires:
- A highly skilled technical team
- Optimized tooling & complex injection molds
- Accurate & repeatable molding presses
- Inspection capabilities
PILLER AIMMCO offers all of the above, in-house. We have a successful track record of producing very close tolerance components for clients in the medical, aerospace, automotive, and consumer electronics industries.
Maintaining Tight Tolerances & Part-To-Part Repeatability
In general, part-to-part consistency in complex plastic injection molding is a result of careful process control. Assuming a stable process, optimized tooling, and low shrink material, part-to-part accuracy can be very consistent, within ±0.001” for example, and can be held even tighter depending upon a number of variables:
- Part geometry
- Part size
- Feature locations
- Resin type & shrink rate
- Tool design
- Molding process control & machine repeatability
Applications demanding higher levels of accuracy and precision will involve an iterative tooling approach to “dial-in” critical features. Flow modeling is used to establish warp prediction, optimized gate locations, and cooling strategies, and complex injection molds are designed “steel safe,” with part features on the low end of the tolerance.
Once the mold is designed and constructed, a thorough trial is performed to establish and center the molding process window, and to collect data that will allow an understanding of process drift and stability. Armed with this information, decisions can then be made regarding tooling adjustments, such as:
- Removing (or adding) tool steel to center a critical feature in the tolerance zone
- Gate revisions
- Cooling adjustments
- Adding or revising over-flow features
- Vent adjustments
- Cavity geometry “falsifications” to address unpredictable warp or feature size
For each round of adjustments, another molding trial is performed and the results evaluated until the tooling features and molding processes produce acceptable results.
Given all of these complexities, it is obvious that successfully executing close tolerance, complex plastic injection molding is anything but trivial. However, with our knowledge, technical team, and integrated tooling and molding operations, we are uniquely equipped for the task, able to produce results where most others cannot. Contact PILLER AIMMCO to discuss the tolerance requirements on your complex plastic injection molding project.
The Complex Plastic Injection Molding Experts
Successfully producing complex part geometries not only requires an intense focus on tooling strategy, but also leadership, collaboration, and a willingness to think outside the box. Experience matters, and having produced thousands of complex injection molds, PILLER AIMMCO offers this experience in spades. We routinely tool and produce parts that many of our competitors say cannot be done. Following are a few examples:
Single Cavity Class 103 Injection Mold
with Four Slides and EJ Bar
Chassis for Hand-Held Medical Display
Intermediate Housing for Hand Held Ultrasound Device
The key to success in these complex plastic injection molding projects lies not only in expert tool engineering, but just as critically in the ability to quickly affect mold changes based on the evaluation of results obtained from molding trials. The process boils down to iterative development: our technical team understands the nuances of complex injection molds and tooling, and with our integrated operations, we are able to effectively collaborate to find solutions and deliver results that our competitors cannot.
Contact PILLER AIMMCO today to learn how we can help turn your complex part requirements into reality.