To ensure that you can move molten plastic materials in the right amount into the mold during a plastic injection molding process, you will need to apply certain pressures, called the injection pressure. Injection pressure helps you fill the mold cavities with molten plastic materials, which can then be cooled down and solidified to form the shape of the plastic products you want to produce.
The right injection pressure can ensure the best result in your plastic parts production while maintaining the right dimensional accuracy and minimizing defects in your products.
The Reasons You Need to Apply the Right Injection Pressure in Plastic Molding
It is always necessary for you to ensure that the injection pressure is correct during the plastic molding process, as it can affect how you run the manufacturing operations later. Here are the reasons why you need to apply the right injection pressure in plastic molding:
- The right pressure ensures the best fill for the mold cavity. In plastic molding, it’s important for you to send the plastic materials to fill the mold cavity in the best way. You must not fill the mold cavities with too much materials, and you must also avoid filling the mold cavities with too little materials. The right injection pressure has the role to ensure the best fill for the mold cavities, ensuring that you can produce the highest-quality plastic parts and components from this process.
- It helps develop accurate plastic parts and components. When you fill the mold cavities with the correct amount of plastic materials, you can build plastic products with the best accuracy and precision. So, applying the correct injection pressure force is important to achieve the best result in your plastic parts production.
- Preventing damages to the plastic products and molds. With the wrong injection pressure, the plastic molding process can get disrupted, as it doesn’t receive the right amount of materials inside the mold cavities. This can result in the damages of the plastic molds and the plastic parts you produce with it.
- Lack of injection pressure might not shape the plastic products well. The lack of injection pressure can also cause the problem of defects in the plastic parts and components you are producing. This is because there is not enough pressure to fill the mold with the right amount of materials, which will allow the mold to shape the materials well.
- Preventing excess materials during the plastic molding process. The right injection pressure can also help you prevent the excess materials you might get during the plastic molding process. The excess materials can cause bad edges around the plastic parts you are producing, which will necessitate you to remove these excess materials from the finished products later.
- Minimizing waste materials from the plastic parts production. Too much injection pressure will fill the mold cavities with too much materials, which can also result in more waste materials you need to deal with. The right injection pressure can minimize the waste materials you produce from the plastic parts production process.
What is the Procedure to Decide the Injection Pressure in Plastic Molding?
The procedure to apply injection pressure into the plastic mold will vary depending on various factors, which include part size, shape, clamping force, gate size, wall thickness, and more. So, you can’t determine the same injection pressure as a one-size-fits-all configuration that you can apply for all your plastic injection molding services operations.
Here are some aspects of the procedure to decide the injection molding pressure in plastic molding:
- Part shape and size. The applied injection pressure needs to be proportional to the part shape and size that you are going to build. Remember that the bigger the plastic part size, the bigger the injection pressure you need to apply to accommodate the part shape and size and to ensure that all materials can fill the mold cavity in the best way.
- Clamping force. The clamping force or tonnage of your plastic mold injection should also be a factor in determining how strong the injection pressure you would need to apply. A stronger clamping force can withstand a stronger injection pressure, while a weaker clamping force needs a weaker pressure to avoid any damage during the injection molding operations.
- Gate size. Gate size means the size of the opening in your plastic mold or tooling, which will allow the plastic materials to be injected into the mold with the right injection pressure. The bigger the gate size, the bigger the pressure it can handle, and the bigger the plastic parts it can accommodate.
- Wall thickness. The wall thickness of the plastic parts you produce can also affect how strong the injection pressure you need. Higher thickness means that you will need to keep on filling the mold cavity with materials at a steady pressure until the wall thickness requirement is met. Adjusting the injection pressure is necessary in this case.
- Plastic material type. Some plastic materials have very low melting points, so they can be more liquid when you inject them into the mold, even without applying high temperature to it. The pressure you are using for certain plastic materials will be different based on various parameters of the plastic materials itself.
- Injection stages. The number of injection stages you have will also affect the injection pressure you apply to the plastic mold injection. A single injection stage might only require you to send high injection pressure once, whereas multiple injection stages might require you to separate the injection pressures into medium and low pressures for each stage, depending on your requirements.
Conclusion
It’s really important to follow the right procedure of applying injection pressure into your mold by considering various important factors related to it. By following the right procedure to determine the injection molding pressure you need to apply, you can ensure to fill up your mold cavities with the right amount of materials.
Applying the wrong injection pressure might end up causing defects and various other problems in the products you are trying to make.
TEAM Rapid is the manufacturing company you can trust to help you with various plastic molding-related projects, allowing you to create best quality injection-molded products for your industry.
