- An inventor or product designer gets an idea or concept for a product. Usually the idea comes from observation of daily life or work, finds out some bugs of current product, or what people need but no product meets their requirement.
- An industrial designer comes up with a possible design with sketch or 3D cad designed software.
- A rapid prototype is possibly made out of plastic, or metal, with process like CNC machining, 3D printing, vacuum casting, or laser cutting, etc. Some times added with painting, polishing, sand blasting, anodizing, or plating to make the surface finished as close to designer’s thinking as possible.
- Approve the prototype (final design), by checking the surface finish, function, assembly, durability and so on.
- An injection mold maker design and produce a rapid tool out of aluminium or soft steel. Rapid tooling, also called bridge-tooling, mainly used for producing low-volume of parts, so that you can test the market with lower cost and faster way.
- Market approved, the injection mold maker design and produce a production mold, This could be pre-hardened, such as NAK- 80, P-20. And ready to do large quantity production.
- Depending on the product and required, it might be made for an injection mold, blow mold, rotational mold, compression mold, or even a metal injection mold.
- Prepare the molding process in-house or choose a qualified molding factory to do this job.
- The actual molding process need to be considered with many things, from selecting the proper type and grade of plastic, the correct molding machine, the cycle time, and the machine settings for the process.
- Project managing. Follow up the mold trial, first batch of sample approving, solving any problem during the molding process. The parts are inspected for defects, perhaps have a secondary operation performed, such as a coating, then they are packaged and shipped.
All the process above, Danke Mold can provide for you! 😊