How to get started DIY injection molding
There is a great future for DIY injection molding, alternative to conventional plastic injection molding market.
DIY injection molding will have a great future,People will be willing to go with DIY injection molding approach rather than paying high costs and dedicating long wait times to the big injection molding companies with giant machines.Since those machines are big investments and have to run in big batches.
How to get started DIY injection molding?
Total 5 steps:
Step 1: got one injection molding machine
Step 2: Design the mold in Solidwork,Autocad or Proe.
Step 3:Making Mold.
Step 4:Got some Plastic pellet.
Step 5:Molding the palstic parts as you wanted.
For machine,Bought a desktop injection molding machine,you can make a diy injection molding machine too.but buy one machine can save much time.and DIY plastic injection molding machine save much cost,need long time. Which is the best choice? Depend on yourself.
Design the mold drawing in CAD. There are three software for choosing:Solidwork,Autocad or Proe. I suggest solidwork,it is easy to learn and use.Find the plastic parts which you want to make,measure the size by Vernier caliper.Then get the 3D drawing.
Make a steel or alumuim mold by CNC machine or tool kits. If you have tool kits,you can diy injection mold by yourself too.By CNC machine, it will be very fast.But find a metal CNC machine not easy,our city is a industry city,have many machines,your city maybe is a Agriculture or tourist city，more hard to get it.The mold is small,you can make it on a desktop cnc machine.
bought some plastic pellets:You have a wide variety of materials to choose from for molding.We suggest PP,ABS,PE. They are normaly use for plastic injection molding.say molding home use plastic cup,bucket,dish etc.
Molding the plastic parts: before molding,fix the mold onthe benchtop injection molding machine,then start to heat the barrel, about 20 minutes,The poly pellets will be melt,you can start to inject the melt plastic into the mold cavity. Cooling about 30 seconds. then you can get the plastic parts.
