Plastic Injection Moulding, advise please

If it's being injection molded, then 3D Pro/E models will go straight to CNC tooling.

HTH, Richard

Hello Mark,

You'd have to ask them. Maybe this helps:

I don't know this company but since you want to produce in China it might still be good to have the key contact in the US.

It depends how complicated it is. If the molds have to be made as well be prepared for a hefty NRE. Or a higher qty order. Molds that we were involved in (not too complicated) usually ran north of $20k.

Be careful with copying other mfg's designs. It might not be legal to do so.

Regards, Joerg

Could not find a suitable newsgroup on offer in the ones available to me, but please feel free to advise me of a better one.

I need to have made, some plastic (Nylon) cases, for a bouncy castle blower I am helping to design. The item will be a fairly large item, measuring some 45X45X35 cm. There are several parts to the blower, and I need an idea of how I go about initiating the design. We have a competitors product which we would like to imitate the best parts of, but we are new to having plastic products made. I have sourced a suitable motor and impeller (Taiwan), we now need to source the plastic housing the whole thing goes into. The end product needs to be made of a fairly rigid, but not brittle, plastic. The plastic assembly is made up of four parts 2X2, which each of the two parts need to be "welded" together, and the subsequent two sub-assemblies screwed together. We are about to have produced, AutoCAD drawings of the product we are trying to imitate, but the first question raised is, do we want 1 Dimensional AutoCAD drawings made, or 3D ones made. What is the best format for presenting to injection moulding companies, for them to quote on?

We are looking to China etc to have this product made for us, does anybody have suggestions on how to work with the Chinese in these sorts of situations? somebody said that we must have an agent working for us over there, any ideas on this? we are most probably able to afford up front, 500 or 1000 pieces in the first instance, is this a sensible figure, to get the best price? anybody have any companies they would like to recommend over there? Any suggestions?

snipped-for-privacy@markXscotford.com (remove the X to reply)

It is not a 'sensible figure' for injection moulding from China. 250000 units is more the sort of scale where they win!. Below 10000 off, you won't even pay for the tool, relative to having the kit entirely produced by plastic welding from ABS. At 1000 off, there are specialist companies (in the UK at least), who do low pressure moulding, using short 'life' dies, which are CNC produced, and will work directly from 3D drawings, to make the dies. This sort of process is a lot cheaper for such short runs.

Best Wishes