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China Plastic Injection Molding

2015/06/16
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I think you may have meant "one hot drop to the center of the plastic injection mold, then COLD runners to the 4 parts"? If you are looking for scrap reduction and plastic injection molding cycle time savings, hot drops to each cavity would be best. This would eliminate the cold runner scrap, or dealing with regrind and the subsequent concerns with contamination, questions about the regrind usage, use of grinders at the plastic injection molding machine, how many generations of regrind are acceptable, etc. The sprue/runner are usually the thickest areas of the plastic injection molded product, and thus require the longest time to cure to the temperature that they can be efficiently ejected from the plastic injection mold. Full hot runner is the way to go for efficiency, as long as the margin and forecast volume support the decision of the higher cost tool (hot runner systems and controllers are not cheap).

This is a political issue, if the Canadian and US governments raise the duty's on goods coming in you will see the "Level Playing Field". I currently do have plastic injection molds build in China and the quality seems to get put in the back seat due to the cost.

I think the first issue is to remove the phenomena of "Lobbying " as few Lobbyist who made tons of money to manipulate the economic policies of USA to favor future plastic injection molding parts imports...on the other hand have you ever come across any lobbyist who works for the future of common man..... may be 6 months before the election....or when the unemployment crosses 10% mark. I found one of the biggest cost shifts was due to the Chinese government raising the electric rates to their plastic injection mold manufacturers. This began about 4-5 years back and has been added onto with wages going up almost 100% in that same time frame.

I share your belief that quality has a cost of plastic injection mold, or as my father said, you get what you pay for. And I hope there will be political well to sustain the economy, but with the U.S. government today, such hope is more like a wish. There is a dollar store near my house here, and very few things in there cost a dollar or less, but even those costing more are of very poor quality and are virtually all plastic injection molds made in China. I think that American plastic injection molders have lowered their standards in the last two decades, and now will buy poor quality goods. It is what they are used to, and for the majority of them, it is all they can afford. It will be interesting to see what happens if the Yuan is allowed to rise freely.

Example: we received a bid in 2006 that was about 45% below the cost of our US plastic injection molding supplier - who by the way was dedicated to our business. After qualifying the Chinese sheet product into domestic US car manufacturing, we sought and received a new quote for larger, more constant volume from the same Chinese plastic injection molds. The price doubled, so that the 2007/2008 quote was actually 5 cents/lb. more than our US supplier - and all Chinese quotes were FOB out of Shenzhen. We had to pick up all duties and transfer fees here in the US.

I have a slightly different take on this - the hot runner configuration is probably most dependent on what type of hot runner you are looking at and the molded part requirements. On the part requirements, if the volumes are not high, you need to look at the ROI of the cost per part, including plastic injection molds, to make sure that the justification is there for the more expensive configuration. Additionally, if the part requires the type of gating and vestige (or lack of vestige) that can only be achieved via use of an plastic injection mold hot runner - you have another factor to add in that goes beyond just pure cost.

We realize the actual long term cost of their plastic injection mold cost cutting efforts. Do they really assume that with unemployment over 10%.....American people would be able to buy their Chinese made plastic injection molds.....e.g. Dollar Stores in Toronto have become Dollar Plus as consumer goods are becoming expensive. By the way I come from second largest most populated country in the world hence don't care how many arguments are against till the logic speaks otherwise.

On the other hand, if the plastic injection mold is subject to frequent change outs, the extra wear and tear on the mold and the set-up may impact the time and cost involved. Often the management team wants to eliminate as much scrap as possible, looking at the cost savings on materials, but don't take into account the extra time and cost involved with PM, set-up and change-outs as well as the up front costs of the plastic injection mold company.

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