Compared Plastic Parts CNC Machining and Injection Molding
After product design, the next step is the actual product creation process. Here is where one must decide how the parts should be made. Experienced manufacturers might already have a design process in mind and know next which design is best suited for a process. Have in mind that the development life cycle results in changes and modifications on the original designs. The top two methods used are injection molding and CNC machining. Both methods have several advantages and disadvantages.
What’s the advantage for plastic parts CNC machining?
This process requires a block of the material to be used to undergo CNC machining, where material layers are surgically removed with precision. The process allows for a wide range of materials to be used without being subjected to too many challenges. Being computer generated, there are few precision tolerances involved. We have used CNC turning&milling, EDM, grinding processed to complete them. As usual, we can control parts precision under +/-0.01mm, even +/-0.001mm after grinding process.
Whats’s the benefit of plastic injection molding?
Just as its name says, it involves injecting material into a material-mold. The procedure involves melting stock material after which it is forced into a mold under high pressure. Afterward, the part cools within the mold, after which its then ejected. The process gets repeated for the next parts. It mainly benefit to produce high volume parts under cheaper price than CNC machining, we can control them through automatic production to reduce labor cost and precision control.
Why we need to choose them one of them?
The decision on which method warrants adoption is a debate between a given set of characteristics. This is volume, speed, design, material and surface finishes. Each of these has gained traction when contrasting one process from the other. It is no surprise that changes are required to allow manufacturing. we need to consider below factors:
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Machined Speed
If you require a rapid prototype or low volume of parts, CNC machining is probably best. For instance, a demand of 10 parts in a week can be comfortably handled by CNC machining. However, demand for 50,000 parts within a span of 4 months will require injection molding. Injection molding will also require adequate time to make the mold and achieve the right tolerances. The duration will vary from a few weeks to a few months. Once this has been achieved, creating parts using the mold can be done speedily. In that respect, the start-up investment and time-taken will pay-off in the long run when it comes to volumes.
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Production Quantities
As mentioned above, time affects each process differently. The fact to consider here is the price. The cheapest bargain will always be determined by the volumes in question. The cost of injection molding significantly performs better than CNC machined parts. At first, it will require a high upfront cost. This cost will eventually be spread out on the number of parts when determining their cost.
What parts do we need to do CNC machined?
A combination of CNC technology and certain cutting tools can make just about anything on CNC machines. Top examples are aerospace parts, medical devices, electronic devices, consumer product of components and mechanical parts. Other parts that require high precision and can be made from this process are propellers, flywheels, gears, shafts, bushings, propellers, molds. Most of machine industry we have to used CNC machining, it is very basic tools to our life. Whatever you want to make single prototype or low-volume production, even mass production, CNC machining can meet all of your expected. Meanwhile, CNC machining tolerance can meet very precision standard, it can ensure all of parts of tolerance under +/-0,02mm, it will meet most of product needs.
What parts do we need to do a plastic injection molding?
Plastic injection molding process is widely applied for most of industies, such as medical device, consumer product, auto parts, electronic devices, IT industry and the others. The parts size is from small size to middle even big size, like big size of car bumpers, middle size of car light and small size gear parts and others. Injection mold have to ask product design and production verification passed, then we can use this process to produce, Plastic injection mold is suitable to larger quantities, as it have one mold cost occurred. It suitable to various of plastic materials such as ABS, POM, PC, Nylon+GF, PEEK, PP, PE and others. The plastic injection mold that we can use automation production machines to complete, so it can save lots of labor cost and product tolerance control.
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