11 August 2015
 Categories: , Blog

For many manufacturers of consumer goods, consolidating operations is an important goal. Being in full control of your production process can cut your costs and allow you to avoid the problems that come with a lengthened supply chain. Unfortunately, some specialized aspects of manufacturing, such as plastic work, can seem intimidating without the proper background knowledge.

Injection molding is one of the most common methods of creating large quantities of consistent products, and yet many business owners don't have a full grasp of the options available to them when they choose to go that route. Below, you'll find a guide to some of those options, allowing you to develop an industrial setup that gives you that all important answer.

Extrusion Molding

The manufacturing of long and hollow plastic pieces can be a difficult process, as securing the proper strength while still allowing for flexibility and minimizing weight is a delicate balance. The extrusion process seeks to achieve those goals by slightly altering the equipment used.

While most injection molding involves an actual mold, most extruders instead make use of a die. This turns the piece you're manufacturing into, functionally, it's own mold, allowing it to be removed for cooling and packaging before additional plastic is injected into its center.

Compression Molding

As with creating small and hollow pieces, creating large solid pieces also comes with some difficulty. Auto parts, home furniture, and other sizable pieces of plastic function best with a lack of seams and a continuous surface, so the key becomes figuring out how to inject enough material into a mold to achieve that solidness. 

In the compression process, the mold itself is heated to very high temperatures so, when it closes, large sheets of plastic are instantly shaped to the relevant specifications. This process not only allows for seamless products, but also mass production that can be difficult to achieve on such a large scale.

Blow Molding

Plastic bottles are everywhere in today's society, whether they're reusable, recycled, or a plain old soda bottle. Many companies who manufacture non-plastics have a need for packaging that may lie outside their expertise, so a specialized process is necessary to streamline those orders. Blow molding is a similar process to glass blowing, where a person or machine pushes hot air through super heated plastic which then forms around a mold. This too can be done in large quantities, and can also be specifically modified to meet your precise packaging needs.

To learn more about injection molding, contact a company like Qualicase Ltd.