Protomold Overview and Rapid Injection Molding Kevin Crystal Sr. Quality Engineer
What is Injection Molding? Rapid Injection Molding 1) The hopper is loaded with the plastic stock material. 2) A heated barrel is used to melt the beads into a molten form. 3) A screw apparatus is used to inject the polymer into a mold. 4) The part cools and solidifies. 5) The mold is opened and the part ejected.
What is Rapid Injection Molding? Rapid mold fabrication Aluminum CNC milled Limits to complexity Overmolding Inserts Geometry Fast real injection molded plastic parts CAD to plastic as fast as 3 days
Applications of Rapid Injection Molding Prototypes Consumer products Automotive Other high volume products Bridge tooling Production parts until a production mold is ready Low to medium volume production Panic situations Line down Crash development projects
What is Conventional Injection Molding? Pen caps by the billions... to dashboards by the millions.
Limitations of Conventional Injection Molding Molds Custom engineering time & cost Extensive milling and EDM time and careful, iterative approaches used. Parts Piece-part pricing optimized for highest volumes Primarily due to mold cost issues Poorly suited for new product development!
What is Rapid Injection Molding?
Limitations of Rapid Injection Molding Molds Aluminum molds from 3-axis 3 CNC mills Aluminum alloy molds wear faster than steel Ejector pin part removal Parts Side actions on parting line in horizontal plane 75 square inch plan size maximum 1.5 deep from parting line (a little more in some cases) Well suited for new product development!
Limitations to small size Minimum.020 thick.
Who is Protomold? 120 employees Privately owned Incorporated May 1999 Two U.S. plants: 45,000 s.f. U.K. plant: 20,000 s.f. Proprietary software for quoting, mold design and plant operation
Industries served Who is Protomold? Medical (not FDA certified), Automotive, Sporting Goods, Industrial Equipment, Appliance, Farm Implement, Consumer Electronics, Computer, Office Furniture, Climate Control, Networking Hardware, Robotics, Etc., Etc., Etc.
Our headquarters: Who is Protomold? Rapid Injection Molding
Who is Protomold? Office, milling and mold storage:
Why Use Protomold? Good, fast and cheap. Pick any three.
What is the Protomold process? Design your part Upload it We quote it in 1 business day or less
What is the Protomold process? When we have a model we can use, you place an order. We make a mold and ship you real injection molded parts in as few as 3 days.
What is the Protomold process? Our sweet spot is between Rapid Prototyping and Conventional Injection Molding You can t t see RTV molding because it s s under the green box except for larger parts.
Some parts we make Parts designed and used internally at Protomold:
Enjoy the Accolades Become known as a Designer/Engineer/Project Manager who gets real plastic molded parts made for your project faster than your peers and competition. Shave days or weeks off prototype testing. Save the day in a line-down situation.
www.protomold.com The Protomold Company, Inc. 1757 Halgren Road Maple Plain, MN 55359 (763) 479-3680 Kevin Crystal Sr. Quality Engineer kevin.crystal@protomold.com