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Supporting production options: Plastic injection molding offers options even for low-volume and prototype needs, when working with the right partner. Be sure to find a molding partner that can walk you through your options here, as this can help streamline production processes, reduce production time, and improve the overall quality of your finished product. Cost: A good injection molding partner will understand your production, quality, budget and business requirements to help you make the right choices in mold material, resin selection, finishing processes and more. By incorporating processes like 3D printing for prototyping, a good molding partner will help expedite product development by reducing prototype lead times and enabling more iterations and testing — an overall benefit for product quality and development speed.

In actuality, choosing the right plastic injection molding partner can give you access to the same processes and capabilities that higher-volume and more established businesses use, streamlining and speeding your time to market. In plastic injection molding, a base plastic material (typically called a “resin”) is heated and liquefied, then injected with pressure into a die containing multiple cavities in the shape of the product or part to be formed. While many molding service providers will state that they take any job, in reality, they will prioritize a higher-volume order over a lower-volume one if capacity is an issue. We specialize in short- and medium-volume jobs, including prototypes, and have worked with numerous startup companies to help get them access to production-quality prototypes that fit their budget.

Starting around 2005, as 3D printing equipment lowered enough in cost to become a viable method of production for applications such as prototyping, design testing and short runs, the industry has seen major advances in the ways that this technology can be applied. These include:Prototyping: 3D printing changed the speed, materials and functionality with which prototypes could be efficiently produced, leading to faster overall production, fewer prototyping iterations and lower overall costs. Let’s take a look at some of them now:Better quality prototypes, faster and at lower costs: Before 3D printing, sacrifices typically had to be made in the production of viable prototypes, whether in materials, fidelity to the design, or the speed and cost of prototype creation. Faster overall production speeds: The time that 3D printing can save in the design and prototyping processes means overall time-to-market is reduced.

Medical suppliers have found that plastic injection molding medical parts, components and devices is one of the most effective ways to attain the quality and specifications they need in a cost-effective and efficient manner. Medical device plastic injection molding is used for applications such as:Housings and casings for medical and laboratory equipmentThese are just a few of the ways medical device plastic injection molding is used. The process of plastic injection molding medical parts can be applied to nearly any area where durable, sterilization-friendly parts are required at high volume and with exceptional accuracy in production. Now that you understand the benefits of plastic injection molding for medical components and devices as well as the specific requirements these components must meet, we’ll take a look at some of the specific materials that fit the bill.