3.

DESIGN FOR INJECTION MOLDING

We are now moving to the fabrication stage: we will see a particular fabrication process method,
the Injection Molding, but most of the principles of this process are valid for all the others.
Injection molding is a common method for mass manufacturing plastic products and is often
chosen because of its capability to economically make complex parts to tight tolerances.
Injection molding is sometimes referred to as a “net shape” manufacturing process because the
molded parts emerge from the molding process in their final form with no or minimal post-
processing required to further shape the product.

DESCRIBION OF INJECTION MOLDING

In principle, injection molding is simple: melt plastic, inject it into a mold, let it cool and, then, out
pops a plastic product.
In reality, Injection molding is an intricate and complex process.
An injection molding machine has three main parts: the injection unit, the mold, and the clamp.
Plastic pellets in the hopper feed into the barrel of the injection unit. Inside the barrel, a screw
transports the pellets forward. Heater bands wrapped around the barrel warm up the plastic
pellets. As the pellets are moved forward by the screw, they gradually melt, and are entirely
molten by the time they reach the front of the barrel. Once enough molten plastic is in front of the
screw it rams forward like the plunger of a syringe. In a matter of seconds, the screw injects the
molten plastic into the empty part of the mold called the cavity image. The plastic solidifies in
under a minute, the mold opens and the part is ejected. The mold then closes, and the process
repeats.
To solve the problem of uneven temperature in the plunger, caused by the fact that plastic
conducts heat poorly, the reciprocating screw was invented, to give the plastic a uniform
temperature.
The molten plastic flows past the front of the screw through indentations or “flutes.” When there’s
enough plastic to fill the mold at the front of the screw, it rams forward like a plunger injecting the
plastic into the mold. Initially the cavity image is filled with air. As the molten plastic is injected it
forces air out of the mold, which escapes through vents. These vents are channels ground into the
landing surface of the mold.
To speed the plastic’s solidification, coolant, typically water, flows through channels inside the
mold just beneath the surface of the interior. After the injected part solidifies, the mold opens.
As the mold opens the volume increases without introducing air, which creates tremendous
suction that holds the mold together. So at first the mold slowly opens several millimeters to allow
air to rush in and break the vacuum, and then, the mold quickly opens the rest of the way so the
part can be removed. The slow step is needed to prevent damage to the mold. These precision
machines steel molds can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Removing the part from the mold can be difficult. When the plastic cools, it shrinks and so become
stuck tightly on the core half of the mold. Molds have built-in ejector pins that push the part off
the mold. The ends of the pins sit flush with the core half of the mold, but are not perfectly aligned
—sometimes they protrude or are indented slightly. So, if you look closely you will see circular
ejector pin “witness” marks on molded products.
1
When the part drops from the mold, an operator has to remove the sprue, that section of plastic
that connected the injection unit to the mold. Sprues are manually twisted or cut off the part.
Sprues are attached to objects only in molds that make a single items at a time.
Smaller objects are made in multiples in a single mold. In these the sprue connects not to the part
itself, but to a network of distribution tunnels called “runners.” The runners fan out from the sprue
and connect to each cavity in the mold via a small — typically rectangular — entrance called the
gate. You can see the gate on plastic cutlery. Productivity can be increased if the number of parts in
the same piece is increased.
Molds always have at least two parts. And where the parts of the mold meet is called the parting
line. When mold halves close they are never perfectly aligned, nor do they have sharp corners —
this creates a noticeable parting line on the molded object.
Another very important aspect of mold design is the draft angle. If a part has walls that are exactly
ninety degrees, it will be very difficult to eject because it’s inner walls will scrape the core half of
the mold. Also, the vacuum will be difficult to break because air cannot readily enter. However, if
the walls are slightly tapered—even just one or two degrees–-it becomes much easier for the part
to be removed because once the part moves slightly, the walls are no longer in contact with the
core half and air can rush in.
The Lego molds use “hot runners.” Hot runners are a heated distribution network. This keeps
plastic inside molten, while the plastic in the mold solidifies. This leaves no gates or sprues to be
removed: the molded bricks are ejected ready-to-use. The downside is that this setup is more
expensive than a traditional cold runner system. On the bottom edges of the brick you can see
ejector pin witness marks. And what’s most clever to me is where Lego designs their draft angle.
The outside of a Lego brick must be square. So, if you cut a Lego brick in half, you can see that
these inner supports are thicker at the top than at the bottom—there is a draft angle of about one-
and-a-half degrees. This helps the ejector pins push the brick off the mold.

2
THE INJECTION MOLDING PROCESS

The mold is inserted and clamped between a stationary and moving platen.
Most injection molding processes generally include plastication, injection, packing, cooling, and
ejection stages.
During the plastication stage, a screw within the barrel rotates to convey plastic pellets and form a
“shot” of polymer melt. The polymer melt is plasticized from solid granules or pellets through the
combined effect of heat conduction from the heated barrel as well as the internal viscous heating
caused by molecular deformation as the polymer is forced along the screw flights.
The first zone of the cylinder is called feed zone (where you insert the plastic pellets), the second is
the transition zone (plastic starts melting) and the third is the meetering zone.
Afterwards, during the filling stage, the plasticated shot of polymer melt is forced from the barrel
of the molding machine through the nozzle and into the mold. The molten resin travels down a
feed system, through one or more gates, and throughout one or more mold cavities where it forms
the molded product(s).
After the mold cavity is filled with the polymer melt, the packing stage provides additional material
into the mold cavity as the molten plastic melt cools and contracts. The process of packing is used
to avoid shrinkage; the plastic’s volumetric shrinkage varies with the material properties and
application requirements.
After the polymer melt ceases to flow, the cooling stage provides additional time for the resin in
the cavity to solidify and become sufficiently rigid for ejection. Around the mold there is a cooling
system in which for example we can find water circulating inside the mold to keep the mold always
at the same temperature.
Then, the molding machine actuates the moving platen and the attached moving side of the mold
to provide access to the mold cavities. The mold typically contains an ejection system with moving
slides and pins that are then actuated to remove the molded part(s) prior to mold closure and the
start of the next molding cycle. So, while a part of the mold is fixed, the other part moves back and
forward to allow the final product to be extracted.

3
The injection molding machine is a CNC machine (numerical control machine), so the process is
highly automatized. The use of this kind of technology allows companies to keep the production
process in countries like Italy and Germany, while processes with an important component of
manual labor are more likely to be moved in countries where wages are lower (China).
Injection molding is based on the concept of replication. Permanent molds cost a lot of money
(from 10000 to millions of euros) and once you buy them, they can’t be modified. So, they are
going to last years and are designed to produce a high number of products or a low number of
products with a high individual value.
Every injection molded product has two sides:
 "Aesthetic side"": the one seen by the user, mainly the design and good looking of the
product is considered in this part.
 "Engineered side": full of technical features that permit the product to work, to do its job,
functional from a structural point of view. Decided the thickness, where the ribs must be
placed, … and all the technical features (in this process there are some constraints, but
there is still "space of work").

MOLD FUNCTIONS
The mold design directly determines the molded part quality and molding productivity. The
injection mold is itself a complex system comprised of multiple components that are subjected to
many cycles of temperature and stress. There are often trade-offs in mold design, with lower-cost
molds sometimes resulting in lower product quality or inefficient molding processes. The cost of
advanced mold designs must be justified either by net cost savings or increases in the customer’s
willingness to pay for advanced product designs. Cost estimation thus serves an important role in
developing appropriate manufacturing strategies and mold designs.
The mold is designed to:
 Distribute the molten polymer inside the cavity;
 Shape the part;
 Solidify the part;
 Eject the part.
There are significant compromises and potential risks associated with
mold design. In general, smaller and simpler molds may be preferred
since they use less material and are easier to operate and maintain.
Getting the right design is important to reduce not only cost and time of
production but also reduces the pollution of the environment.
To summarize the mold functions: Distribution system (primary and
secondary runners), Cavities, Heat exchange, Ejection system, Centering
system, Clamping system, Force distribution, Internal mechanisms.

4
MOLD STRUCTURES AND TYPES
An injection mold has many structures to accomplish the functions required by the injection
molding process. There are many different types of molds: two-plate mold, three-plate mold or
hot-runners mold.

Two-plate mold

A mold is constructed of a number of plates bolted together. These plates commonly include the
top clamp plate, the cavity insert retainer plate or “A” plate, the core insert retainer plate or “B”
plate, a support plate, and a rear clamp plate or ejector housing.
The two-plate mold uses two plates to contain the polymer melt. Here everything that solidified in
the mold has to be ejected, including parts, runners and sprues. For this reason, every part must
be drafted, not only all the parts but also the sprue and the runner. The piece can be gated only at
the "bottom".
Molding applications requiring high production quantities often do not use two-plate mold
designs.

Three-plate mold

5
The three-plate mold is so named since it provides a third plate that floats between the mold
cavities and the top clamp plate. Now the parts can be center gated, can be gated at any location
and the mold provides for the automatic separation of the feed system from the mold cavities.
Hot-runner mold

Hot runner molds provide the benefits of three-plate molds without their disadvantages, yet give
rise to other issues, for instance is very expensive. The term “hot runner” is used since the feed
system is typically heated and so remains in a molten statue throughout the entire molding cycle.
As a result, the hot runner does not consume any material or cycle time associated with conveying
the melt from the molding machine to the mold cavities.

Comparison
In general, hot runner molds are excellent with respect to molding cycle performance but poor
with respect to initial investment, start-up, and on-going maintenance. By comparison, two-plate
molds have lower costs but provide limited molding cycle productivity. Three-plate molds do not
provide as high a level of molding productivity as hot runner molds and have higher costs than
two-plate molds. For this reason, there has been a trend away from three-plate molds.

DESIGN FOR
INJECTION
MOLDING

Given that there is

substantial interplay between the product
design, mold design, and the injection
molding process, an iterative mold
development process is frequently used.

6
To reduce the product development time, the product design and mold design are often
performed concurrently.
During the mold design process multiple design iterations are typically conducted until a
reasonable compromise is achieved between size, cost, complexity, and function.

During this process we always have to consider that industrial designers do not
care about the structural features and requirements. That’s why engineers need
to take the given design saving the aesthetic value but, at the same time, saving
the structural features and requirements of the product.

A detailed review of the plastic part design should be conducted prior to the design and
manufacture of the injection mold. The design review should consider the fundamentals of plastic
part design, as well as other concerns related specifically to mold design. Some of the most basic
part design considerations are:
 Part thicknesses,
 Presence of ribs,
 Presence of bosses,
 Edge effect,
 Surface finish,
 Draft,
 Undercuts.

Uniform wall thickness

The thickness of the part should be as uniform as possible (uniform thickness)
In general, plastic takes a long time to cool down; that’s why usually plastic parts are thin. If a
plastic part is thick it takes long to cool down and solidify.
With different thicknesses, when ejected the temperatures within the piece are different, parts will
exhibit higher temperatures near the thick sections and lower temperatures near the thin sections,
causing differential shrinkage that can result in significant geometrical distortion. In other words, in
a piece that has different thicknesses warpages are produced.

7
The best design may be to use a thinner wall thickness together with vertical ribs in those areas
requiring greater stiffness and strength.

Rib design
Ribs can be effectively used (where possible) to stiffen the part, reducing the cycle time, saving
material, decreasing the molded part warpage.
Ribs are elements that can stiffen a wall without increasing the thickness, they save a lot of
material. They can provide significant performance and economic advantages.

Example: for the ribbed part, the base thickness of the rib is 70% of the wall thickness of the part,
H, the height of the rib is four times the wall thickness of the part and the two ribs are spaced at
ten times the wall thickness of the part. For the same stiffness, the part without ribs is 30 %
thicker. However, the 30 % thicker part will consume approximately 15 % more material and have a
70% longer cycle time than the thinner part with ribs.
In general, ribs thicker than 70% of the wall thickness will tend to draw material away from the
center of the opposite wall when the rib cools. The volumetric shrinkage in this region can cause
internal voids or sink to appear on the side of the part opposite the rib, this esthetic defect is
called sink mark. Also, draft of 1° per side is often used to facilitate ejection of the molded ribs.
A similar feature to ribs are webs that connect opposing walls.

Boss design
Bosses are required for assembly, they are needed when you
need to insert a screw, or you have a pin to insert on the other
side of the piece. Bosses can be isolated or integrated with ribs.

Designed bosses must be able to withstand the torque applied during insertion of the self-
threading screws as well as the potential tensile pull-out forces applied during end-use, finally
avoiding the wall thickening. At the same time, however, bosses should not be designed with

8
overly thick sections that may require extended cycle times or cause aesthetic problems. As in ribs,
consideration of the draft angle for extrusion should be made.

Edge effect
Sharp corners are often specified in product design to maximize the interior volume of a
component, to facilitate mating between components, or to improve the aesthetics. However,
sharp corners in molded products should be avoided for reasons related to product performance,
mold design, and injection molding:
 Residual stress concentration on the part;
 Difficult (sometimes impossible) to make on the mold;
 Uneven cooling of the molded part.

Surface finish
Surface finish is the product specification that has the
highest impact on mold design and cost.
The smoother we want the surface to be, the highest will
be the cost of the process. Not every surface needs to have
high quality, only those that can be clearly seen by the final
customer. Textures on the surfaces can be made using
chemical processes or laser.
On the table we can see different levels of surface finish.

Draft angle
Draft refers to the angle of incline placed between the vertical surfaces of the plastic moldings and
the mold opening direction. Draft is normally applied to facilitate ejection of the moldings from
the mold.
Product designers frequently avoid the application of significant draft, since it alters the aesthetic
form of the design and reduces the molding’s internal volume. However, the absence of a draft

9
angle would make the ejection much more difficult and would damage the surface of the part. Also
using draft angles extend the life of the mold.

Undercuts
An undercut is a feature in the product design that interferes with the ejection of the molding
from the mold. These design features include, for example, a window in a side wall, an overhang
above the bottom wall of the part, a horizontal boss, and a snap beam or “finger.”

If you want to have a hole in the part, you need to add a pin to the mold so that the melted plastic
flows around it. When the plastic solidifies you need a mechanism that removes the pin (side pull)
allowing the part to be ejected.
What I need is a side pull that, when the mold closes, enters and creates all these holes and, when
the plastic solidify, leaves the mold. The use of side pulls inside a mold increases the cost of the
mold itself. If you place undercuts during the design process, you are committing to higher cost
during production.

COST ESTIMATION
There are three main Cost Drivers in injection
molding:
 Mold cost and its maintenance:
o part size and complexity

10
 o tolerances and finishing
o number of cavities
 Material cost:
o polymer
o part volume
 Process cost (labor and machines cost):
o machine size
o cycle time
o number of cavities
By plotting these cost we can say that:
While the mold cost is a fixed cost (cost that you
have unregard the fact that you are producing);
labor, machines and material, so the process and
material costs, are considered variable costs
(vary depending on how much you produce).
The reasons are:
 I would stop buying material if the volume of
production decreases;
 Human resources and machines can be
allocated to other products if they
production of the product they were
allocated decreases.

When evaluating costs, we always must divide

for the volume we foresee we will produce. The
material cost is a variable cost, but the ratio
between the cost of the material and the
production volume is a constant. The same is for
the process cost. The mold cost is fixed, so if we
consider the cost per part, it decreases when the
number of parts produced increases.
As we will see, in taking decisions we always
consider the cost per part.

All the decisions taken during the design of the part commit the cost that you will have later in
production. Design for Injection Molding is a tool used to early estimate those committed costs.

Part cost

11
Every decision has to take into consideration the unit cost or cost per part, given by the total cost
divided by the total number of parts.
The cost per part is given by the sum of the mold cost per part, the material cost per part, and the
process cost per part, all divided by the yield.
C mold/ part +C material / part + C process / part
C part =
yield
The cost of defects, such as short shot, flash, contamination, improper color match, surface
striations, warpage and other dimensional issues, burn marks, poor gloss, and others, can be
incorporated into the part cost by estimating the yield.
Yield is the fraction of molded parts that are acceptable, is an efficiency indicator. The cost of the
part must take into consideration defects and errors. Also, the resources used for building the
defected parts are taken into consideration. The yield is a number with a value a little less than 1.
Its value depends on the total number of molding cycles: as the total number of molding cycles
increases the value of yield increases, because the defects decrease. The value depends also on
high or low quality requirements.

We can roughly divide plastic parts in two categories: commodities and specialties.

Commodities don’t have a high value and the design and complexity are low. For commodities the
material cost has a high value, more or less the half of the total cost, and the mold cost is low
because it is divided by a large number of items.
Specialty parts, where the complexity of the part has a high value, the complexity of the mold is
high and so the cost of the mold is high. These parts are designed to use not a lot of material and
they usually take a long time to be processed. Most of the cost is inquired to the mold and the
process, because particular processes and different molds have to be done, refabricated, …
Material and processing costs are quite easy to calculate, whereas mold cost is difficult to
calculate. But for commodities this is not a problem because it is just a little part of the total cost,
whereas for specialty part mold cost has the biggest share and its calculation is not that easy.
So, calculating the total cost of a commodity its easy because we can calculate the material cost
and multiplicate it by 2, obtaining a plausible estimation of the part cost. This cannot be done for
specialty parts because the material cost is not that relevant, instead the mold cost is high.

12
EXAMPLE
Considering the example of a laptop bezel form the table some
information about the Laptop Design Data are given.

The production quantity is used to calculate the cost of the mold per part.
Other information about the envelope, the sizes of the part, Length, Width, Height, tell the room
occupied by the piece inside the mold and therefore the size of the mold and the needed material
for the mold. With this data we can estimate the cost for the material used to build the mold.
Then it gives the overall surface area and the volume of the part. The ratio between volume and
area gives an estimation of the complexity of the part, it’s a complexity index. The more faces the
piece has the more complex it is.
Finally, we have the wall thickness. The ticker the part the longer the cooling time, the longer the
cycle time.

Material cost
The cost of the material per part can be estimated as:
C material/ part =V part · ρ plastic material · k plastic material · f feed waste
 V part : volume of the part;
 ρ plastic material : density of the selected material;
 k plasticmaterial : cost of the selected material;
 f feed waste: some of the material is wasted during the IM process, the factor depends on the
type of feed designed.

With decisions in design and material of the part, an estimation of the committed material cost per
part can be calculated. It’s a committed cost, meaning that this cost can be reduced.
For a commodity part this makes sense, it's wort it, whereas in a specialty part it doesn't make
sense because the material cost it's just a little part of the total cost, making an effort for it doesn't
make sense.

13
When choosing a material, the decision is based both the cost of that material and its properties.
When deciding if a material of a part can be changed, we always have to verify if the structural
functionality of the piece is maintained, so both the strength and the stiffness of the piece.
So, when deciding the material of a piece we have to calculate how much of the new material we
have to use in order to have the stiffness required.
Let’s consider the following example:
Starting from steel we want to find another
material, maintaining the required value of
stiffness.

With calculations we obtain that:

3,7mm of polyethylene have the same stiffness
of 0,61mm of steel.
And so on with the other plastics.

We can say that the volume of the part is proportional to the thickness and the cost is proportional
to the volume, therefore the cost is proportional to the thickness.
By choosing a material with a high value of the Young's modulus, meaning a stiffer material, the
volume decreases but the cost of that material increases, is higher. So, estimations must be done,
and the final decision will be based on a trade-off.

14
Process cost
The processing cost per part is a function of the number of mold cavities, the cycle time, and the
hourly rate of the machinery and labor:
t cycle Rmolding machine
C process/ part = ·
ncavities s
3600
h
The Process cost is the amount of time the machine is used plus the amount of time an operator is
used to produce a single part.
The allocation of the cost to the single part is made by giving a rate (R) for the machine used, in
terms of how big the machine is, the cost to make the machine work, run, the maintenance
required, how old or new the machine is, … including the operator cost of using that machine
(labor cost). The bigger the machine the higher the cost. It's important to try to reduce the
machine side.
The cycle time expresses how much the machine is used. Cycle time is the amount of time
between the closing and opening of the mold; it depends on the wall thickness of the part,
because it depends on the cooling time of the part. The ticker the wall, the longer the cycle time.
The relationship between the wall thickness and the cycle time is given by the formula:

t cycle=4
[ ]
s
mm
2
· h [ mm ] ) · f cycle efficiency
2 ( wall

The cycle efficiency depends on

the injection molding machine
used.

The process cost also considers the number of cavities of the mold, because it affects the number
of pieces produced every cycle time.
The rate is related to the geometrical characteristics, it depends on how big the machine is and the
quantity used to classify the bigness of a machine is the clamping force. Clamping force ( F clamp)
indicates how much force is required to keep the mold closed.
The bigger the machine in clamping force the higher the rate: the relationship between the rate
and clamping force is linear:
Rmolding =( 43.3+0.095 · Fclamp ) · f machine
f machine is a factor relating to the capability of the machine and the associated labor.
The clamping force required to keep the mold closed during injection molding is a function of the
Projected area: A projected =L part · W part .
[t]
F clamp =80 ·10 [ Pa ] · (n cavities · L part ·W part [ m ]) ·
6 2
9800[ N ]
The number of cavities is chosen to minimize the cost, we’ll see how.

15
We saw how using a stiffer material we could reduce the thickness and therefore the volume. This
does also reflect on the process cost. By using a stiffer material, the piece is thinner and so the
cooling time reduces and therefore the process cost reduces.

Reducing the wall thickness is always the thing to do, both for commodities, because it reduces
the material cost, and for specialty parts, because it reduces the process cost.
If we have process where the processes’ costs are more relevant, choosing a stiffer material is
more convenient, because it decreases process’ cost (increasing material costs).

Mold cost
The cost of the mold is very complex to determine. For commodity parts that are very cheap and
have a huge production volume, the cost of the mold could be irrelevant, so an accurate
estimation is not necessary.
Remembering the equations is not necessary. Simulations gives the mold cost automatically.
The cost of the mold per part can be assessed as:
C total mold
C mold/ part = · f maintenance
n total
where ntotal is the total production quantity of parts to be molded, and f maintenance is a factor
associated with maintaining the mold.

The cost of the mold for a given application is given by the sum of the cost of the mold base, the
cost of all cavities and the cost of their customization.
C total mold =Cmold base +C cavities +C customization

The mold base is often standardized and can be chosen from a catalogue. The larger our part is,
the larger the mold needs to be and the thicker the part is, the thicker the mold base needs to be,
so cost increases.
16
The cost for manufacturing the cavities usually amounts to the half of the total mold cost. The first
cost group is attributed to the fabrication of the mold cavity (a major influence on the total cost,
almost half). These costs mainly depend on:
 Part geometrical complexity,
 Material,
 Tolerances,
 Surface finish.
For multiple cavities:
C cavities= ( Ccavity · n cavities ) · f cavity discount
In general, the more complex the part is, the tighter tolerances, the higher requirements in terms
of surface finish, thus the more complex the fabrication of the mold and the higher the cost.
The complexity of a part is calculated using a complexity factor:

In CAD these values are easily calculated. In fact, the design for manufacturing tools are based on
mathematical correlations between geometrical characteristics and costs.

Cavity cost

When we increase the number of cavities the mold cost

increases. The more cavities on a mold the bigger the cost.
It’s not a linear equation, it grows less that linearly, because
of volumetric scale factors.
Instead, the process cost (machine cost and wages)
decreases when the number of cavities increases.
The material cost slightly increases (is nearly constant)
because you have to use more runners (more material
wasted), when the number of cavities increases.
Summing up the individual costs we obtain the cost price of
the part and understand how the number of cavities affects
this cost. The optimal number of cavities should be
determined by an iterative process.

So, the overall cost depends on the number of cavities and usually, companies tend to
manufacture molds with a number of cavities that can minimize the overall cost.

17
TEST QUESTION!!!!!
DOES THE OPTIMUM NUMBER OF CAVITIES DEPEND ON THICKNESS? DOES THE OPTIMUM
NUMBER OF CAVITIES DEPEND ON SIZE?
Yes, to both questions.
Thickness impacts processing cost, because thickness impacts cooling time, cooling time impacts
cycle time and cycle time impacts the processing cost.
By decreasing thickness, the processing cost decreases and so the optimum goes to the left on the
chart, corresponding to a decrease on the number of cavities decreases. This because, by
decreasing thickness, the mold cost doesn’t change, because the complexity stays the same; the
material cost will change but it is constant. Knowing that the optimum number of cavities is a
trade-off between mold cost and processing cost, then in this situation the optimum will move to
the left.
The size of the part is related to the optimum number of cavities.
By changing the size of the part (a little bit, not too much), the mold cost increases, the process
cost will stay the same and the optimum cost will go to the left, so the number of cavities
decreases.
When the part is large it’s likely to have single cavity molds. The larger the parts the less likely
having a high number of cavities. This because going form a single cavity to a double cavity mold
increases the mold cost by a large extend, instead the process cost doesn’t change so heavily.
Instead, the smaller the part the less the mold cost will increase when increasing the number of
cavities; then the number of cavities will increase and so the size of the mold will be big. The cycle
time is divided by a large number.

18
BREAKEVEN ANALYSIS
Minimization of the total molded part cost is not a simple task since injection molds and molding
processes are optimally designed for different target production quantities. Typically, there is a
tradeoff between the upfront investment in the mold and later potential savings related to the
processing and material costs per part.
To provide the best possible mold design and quote, multiple mold designs should be developed
for different target production quantities, and the total production costs estimated and compared
via breakeven analysis.
The cost analysis will typically indicate the need for different mold designs at extremely low and
extremely high production quantities, the mold design can be less certain at intermediate
production volumes. The customer can be provided both designs to select the alternative that best
fits their technical requirements and business strategy.

19