Five reasons why you should opt for custom micro injection molding

by Ieva Masaityte Digital Marketing Manager

Five reasons why you should opt for custom micro injection molding

As long as the world keeps endeavoring to miniaturize all the devices and equipment, micro injection molding will continue to grow and replace conventional schemes.

Micro injection molding is the specific part manufacturing technique in which liquefied plastic is injected into cavities with extremely high precision to manufacture tiny parts. Micro molded parts either be “micro” in size, or they can have microfeatures. It is crucial, however, they have micro tolerances for the process to qualify as micro molding.

With a process that has already revolutionized the manufacturing of small parts, going custom can be very beneficial.

5 Reasons for Choosing Custom Micro Injection Molding:

1. Better Material and Technology Alignment

Material choice is the first step for micro injection molding, on which depends the ultimate cost and the choice of technique adopted. In custom micro injection molding, a designer not only chooses the material compatible with the available technology, making the entire process more economical, but also keeps the desired design, color, and finish of the part in mind while making this choice.

Hence, the parts manufactured better fit the customer’s industry. For example, consumer items usually require a visual appeal, which standard plastic colors do not give.

As the process occurs on-demand, designers and engineers can pay more attention to detail, which results in excellent outcomes.

2. Quality increase

The quality of a micro molded product depends upon how well the mold cavity gets filled. Several parameters (mold temperature, injection speed, holding pressure, etc.) affect the mold filling, along with the shape of the mold. While increasing the parameter (for example, barrel and mold temperature or injection speed) usually causes the cavity to fill more fully, efficiency and cost of this choice also need to be factored in.

Custom micro injection molding allows for the design of molds and parameter selection specific to the product industry. As a result, precise micro feature molds appear in the end-product, leading to parts with excellent micro tolerances.

Furthermore, with custom micro injection molding, repetitive tasks can be automated, which leads to increased accuracy and precision.

With the flexibility provided by this process, manufacturers can meet the most complicated requirements efficiently, resulting in high-quality parts.

3. Strength and resistance assurance

With a custom micro injection molding process, everything is up to the manager to choose and optimize. Hence, an expert can select the material, having the right mechanical strength for the customer's product, the best processing parameters to provide enhanced impact and breakage resistance, and increased lifetime.

4. Manufacturing costs optimization

Cost optimization is the ultimate focus when utilizing micro injection molding, and decreasing the costs to the minimum while keeping the quality intact is possible with custom manufacturing of micro parts.

For custom orders, manufacturers aim to design molds that utilize a lower amount of aluminum, lead to lesser waste relative to the production and have the minimum tooling costs.

Some waste production, however, is inevitable. Manufacturers create plans to re-use this waste in the next run, if possible. This usually involves turning the defective items back to molten liquid to make them suitable for injection.

Additionally, micro injection molding machines are smaller, and in custom manufacturing, they operate at economically optimal conditions. Hence, the total cost of injection molding process reduces extensively.

5. Shorter lead-time

Rapid injection molding involves fast prototyping, responsive manufacturing partners, and a team that can rapidly accommodate the required changes.

Custom micro injection molding allows all that and much more by letting manufacturers minimize product life cycles and tooling times. As a result, designs can come to the market in a few weeks, unlike months required in conventional methods.

Applications for custom micro injection molding:

Custom micro injection molding has numerous applications that can take full advantage of this process. For example, using medical injection molding, a specific type of custom micro-molding process, special medical devices are produced using suitable materials, like medical grade plastics and biomaterials. This process creates highly detailed features that have properties tailored for their use in medical environments, for instance, durability, chemical resistance, etc.

Furthermore, microelectronic components, including transistors and conductors, are also manufactured using this method due to its precisions and selection of the best suitable materials, such as semiconductors.

Small automotive parts work and interact with other vehicle components, and hence, they require perfect interference, or the whole automobile can collapse. Additionally, they need to have properties, such as high strength and heat resistance, to help them endure extreme conditions. With custom micro injection molding, the correct dimensions and micro features with minimal tolerances, along with the required characteristics, can be manufactured easily.

In conclusion, custom micro injection molding is cost-efficient, time-saving, extremely precise, and fulfills any design requirements. The flexibility and wide variety of choices in this process ensure that the products perform exceptionally, pertaining to their specific application, and last a long time. The benefits associated with this technique are the reason why it is growing prevalent by the day.