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Small mold factories do not have redundant staff. This helps save costs, but also means that they may face staff shortages. They don’t have an office clerk to interface with you and it is usually the factory owner who is responsible for most projects, which helps you to communicate effectively.
Medium-sized mold factories have more employees, but the mold makers work mostly on their own. They have an office clerk to coordinate with you, but he or she doesn’t necessarily know a lot about molds, so your communication with the molders may not always be smooth. Also, the mold maker who works on your job may not be very skilled, so the work quality may suffer.
Large mold factories have a well-organized company structure and enough staff. They usually have teams to discuss technical solutions and collaborate on material sourcing, quality inspection and so on. This means your project is more likely to be done well and on time.
By Fabien Gaussorgues
Do you need to manufacture a plastic part in China? The first question is usually ‘what is the best material?’ comes before prototyping and before deciding on a manufacturer.
The most common plastics used in China are acrylic (PMMA), acetal (POM), nylon (PA66), polycarbonate (PC), acrylonitrile (ABS), thermoplastic (PET), polypropylene (PP), low density polyethylene (LDPE), and polyetheretherketone (PEEK).
There is usually no straightforward answer. Many criteria have to be considered, and a compromise often needs to be chosen.
The most common criteria clients mention are listed below:
To make this choice more complicated, it is possible to mix some materials — for example ABS/PC, or adding some fiber glass for a better fit to the final product.
There are also significant differences between Chinese “no name” raw material and branded offers coming from China, Taiwan (e.g. Formosa, Chimei), Germany (e.g. BASF, Bayer) and the USA (e.g. Dupont, Sabic).
When the performance is critical and is close to the limit of what the material can achieve, it is important to control its source and to identify the material origin. For example, for high precision, you might want a plastic with low shrinkage, and adding fiber will improve performance.
There are two more reasons for controlling the source:
There are many resources available online to help the user find the right raw material. However, it is also important to rely on the manufacturer’s experience (assuming you have found a manufacturing partner you can trust). They can suggest solutions you might not have thought of.
What else? Sometimes, you might simply want to reuse the same plastic as an existing product with similar performance requirements. How to ‘reverse engineering’ it and discover what plastic they used? The solution is to burn it!!!
Most plastics have different behaviors, and product families can be identified this way.
Side note:
This method can also confirm if your supplier used the right type of plastic. The temptation to save on purchasing costs is very high, especially if they think you will not pay for expensive laboratory tests.
We listed a few other simple tests that can be carried out to check a plastic’s flexibility here.
Here are some useful online resources regarding the choice of the right polymer for injection molding:
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It includes:
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