How do you manufacture plastic products?
Plastics are the most common materials for producing end-use parts and products, for everything from consumer products to medical devices. Plastics are a versatile category of materials, with thousands of polymer options, each with their own specific mechanical properties. But how are plastic parts made?
A variety of plastic manufacturing processes have been developed to cover a wide range of applications, part geometries, and types of plastics. For any designer and engineer working in product development, it is critical to be familiar with the manufacturing options available today and the new developments that signal how parts will be made tomorrow.
This guide provides an overview of the most common manufacturing processes for producing plastic parts and guidelines to help you select the best option for your application.
How to Choose the Right Plastic Manufacturing Process
Consider the following factors when selecting a manufacturing process for your product:
Form: Do your parts have complex internal features or tight tolerance requirements? Depending on the geometry of a design, manufacturing options may be limited, or they may require significant design for manufacturing (DFM) optimization to make them economical to produce.
Volume/cost: What’s the total or the annual volume of parts you’re planning to manufacture? Some manufacturing processes have high front costs for tooling and setup, but produce parts that are inexpensive on a per-part basis. In contrast, low volume manufacturing processes have low startup costs, but due to slower cycle times, less automation, and manual labor, cost per part remains constant or decreases only marginally when volume increases.
Lead time: How quickly do you need parts or finished goods produced? Some processes create first parts within 24 hours, while tooling and setup for certain high volume production processes takes months.
Material: What stresses and strains will your product need to stand up to? The optimal material for a given application is determined by a number of factors. Cost must be balanced against functional and aesthetic requirements. Consider the ideal characteristics for your specific application and contrast them with the available choices in a given manufacturing processes.
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How to choose the right plastic manufacturing process?
You need to consider the following aspects when choosing a plastic manufacturing process for your product:
Product characteristics:
Does your product have complex internal features or tight tolerance requirements? Manufacturing options may be limited depending on the complexity of the design of the product or they may require changes to the design to make it suitable for certain methods of manufacturing and make them economical to produce.
Material:
Consider what your product will need to stand up to? Several factors determine the ideal material for a given application. It is important to consider functional and aesthetic requirements, as well as cost. Make sure that you have considered the ideal characteristics for your specific application and compare them with the available choices in a given manufacturing process.
Volume/cost:
What is the total volume of products that you require? High volume plastic manufacturing often has high initial costs for tooling, but the products can be inexpensive on a per-part basis. In contrast, low volume processes may have additional set-up costs on top of tooling costs and the cost per part is higher due to shorter manufacturing cycles depending on which manufacturing process is chosen.
Lead time:
How quickly do you need parts produced? Some processes can create first parts within 24 hours, while tooling and set-up for certain high-volume production processes will take several months to manufacture.