Plastic part is the most common components for nearly every product, which is widely used iin automotive, medical, electronic, home appliance, and other industrial products. As plastic parts offers low cost, consistent repeatability, complex part structure, and thin of wall.
A plastic parts can be manufactured by injection molding, blow molding, extrusion molding, and silicone molding. However injection molding is the most popular process to manufacture plastic parts in large volume. So it is very important to understand some basic knowledge on its design and manufacturing.
However it’s not easy to design a proper plastic parts with cost-effective, durable of use, and good appearance. Because a good plastic design requires the comprehensive background and experience on product functional, part structure, material selection, assembly efficiency, manufacturing cost, and injection molding manufacturing process.
In theory, we must design parts with good aesthetics, enough strength, easy-for- manufacturing. Meanwhile, even thickness of wall, proper draft, ribs, radius, and chamfer are most common design fundamentals for parts structure. On the other hand, a correct material choose is also very important to plastic part design.
Here below we would like to share some useful experience about plastic injection molding parts design, which would be helpful for product designer, project manager, or other related people.