What Processes can C3 offer you?
Component Design & Plastic Injection Moulding
These Component Design & Production Plastic Injection Moulding pages provide design and production considerations. We aim to provide a little guidance in an endeavour to avoid the common hazards caused by incorrect moulding design. Moulding design has a direct effect on the ability of a component to be injection moulded. The injection moulding tooling production process, in common with almost all engineering processes, dictates that - the more complex an tool the more expensive that tool.
Component Production
Experienced designers and technical staff offer a new product design and development service. We have multiple CAD/CAM seats with component, and tool design capability. We are able to design an component "from scratch" or import your drawing/model files.
Mould Tool Production & Moulding in the Far East
C4 (our sister company) was established to give support to companies in the plastics industry who chose to deal with plastic injection moulding companies in China . Our rationale is to ensure customer satisfaction by providing first class project management, control and thus problem-free, high quality injection moulding tooling. Included in the C4 remit, although less popular than in recent years, is the management, and importation, of plastic injection moulded product.
The Injection Moulding Process
A little background on the plastic injection moulding process can be found on these pages. We leave injection moulding machinery, and the vagaries thereof, to the manufactures. You should find a few links below.
Material Selection
The material selection page provides some assistance with plastics for your application, this 'plastic material selection guide' lists common plastic injection moulding material types available and an overview of each one's basic properties(post moulding). Also listed is some advice on typical trade names, costs and the uses for injection moulded components made from each material type.
Tool Types & Advice
Tool types and advise explains the common tool types available. Also offered are rapid production of steel, and aluminium alloy, mould tools. Hardened steel tools are very durable and capable of producing millions of parts, in contrast aluminium alloy tools are capable of tens to hundreds of thousands of moulded parts, are lower in cost and take less time to construct.
Aluminium Alloy vs Steel Tools
Due to the, ever increasing, need for low costs and short lead times, aluminium alloy mould tools have become extremely popular. Using such technologies, we're able to make tools quicker and at lower cost.
Injection Moulding? FAQ
What process do you require? Frequently asked questions on the process, tooling and countless other things.
Quotation
We can give you a quick tool quote for estimating purposes or if you need an injection moulded component quotation to the nearest tenth of a penny, complete the form, here, and we respond in days or sometimes hours.
Pre Production Models
What does your moulded component look like? Does it fit? The Stereolithography & Selective Laser Sintering processes are the most widely used rapid prototyping techniques for making plastic injection moulding models The process requires files created by a 3D CAD design program.
Troubleshooting
Injection moulding 'the black art', this was an internal document but we thought some of our 'friends' in the injection moulding industry might be interested.
Ultrasonic Welding
The process of ultrasonic welding of plastic components is widely used within the plastic injection moulding industry. The ultrasonic welding guide lists the most common unfilled grades of plastic injection moulding materials available and their suitability for each style of ultrasonic welding.
Plastic Injection Moulding versus Vacuum Forming
Which process is most appropriate/cost effective. We compare injection moulding and vacuum forming. Both processes, injection moulding and vacuum forming require production of a mould tool which emulates the plastic part you require and both the injection moulding process and the vacuum forming process require a polymer to form the component. However, here the similarities end.
