how do i creat plastic injection mold?
June 25th, 2010 | 
Author: Question by Eidelberg: how do i creat plastic injection mold?
and when i do create it how do i use it?
Best answer:
Answer by virtualguy92107
An injection mold is two steel or aluminum plates with the shape that you want to create cut out of the metal, along with channels that allow the molten plastic to be forced into the mold. They are made with standard metal machining techniques. You use it by installing it into an injection molding machine, which means you have to know what model of machine you are building the mold to fit.
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The best way to create an injection mold is to first do a solid model (3D) of the part or assembly you desire. I use Solidworks.
Then you can either have a mold maker do it (best suggestion- see below) or for simple single cavity molds you can try it yourself. There’s many a home/small tabletop injection molding machines (small shot) that you can purchase on-line.
Most solid modeling programs can generate a simple single cavity mold design, you’ll still need to add details to make a working/tool-ready mold.
Cutting the mold will require some sort of tooling, either machined, cast, or some other method for the mold halves/inserts/action. First you’ll have to generate toolpaths/some sort of manufacturing file(s) or for manual tooling – drawings – to make the molds.
I will say tho, that making a good injection mold has a large learning curve with regard to the material used, shot flow, gating, venting, (gotta move the air out) and various other factors such as cooling, ejection pin location…
I will say that uniform wall/part thickness is ideal, making sure the part has draft (so as to eject) and that smooth uniform transitions are best.
For products that are to endure some sort of mechanical stress, most parametric modelers such as solidworks, offer FEA tools (finite element analysis) to study the effects of mechanical stress.
I’ll add – if you’re just looking for a few parts, there’s always methods such as machining it, or have a service do a FDm model (fused deposition model), sort of a 3D printer. We used to use the stratsys stuff; uses pellets of ABS or other plastics to build the part in layers. Other 3D “printers” exist such as the Z corp or 3D Systems stuff or you can do a traditional SLA (stereolithography) model and have urethane castings made.
Lots of options for plastic parts…