Idea, product concept, initial design, prototype, final design, bridge production, market feedback, and final production are all phases that a new product may go through before it can be mass produced and sold successfully. Moving through these various phases quickly and economically is critical to the success of a new product launch. Vertical Injection Molding Technology should be considered as an efficient solution to both prototyping plastic parts and bridge production phases of the new product launches. This technology enables you to prototype plastic parts more easily and move to full production faster.

Prototyping Plastic Parts: Bridge Production

Prototyping

Prototyping plastic parts quickly and cost-effectively requires an injection molding machine that is simple to set up, easy to change over from part to part and material to material, and can operate in a lab environment. The machine must also utilize tooling that can be produced economically, in a short time frame and can be easily loaded and unloaded manually by the machine operator. Successfully producing a suitable prototype often requires the production of various iterations to get to the final result. Variables such as material properties, color variations, tooling configurations, mold pressures, and product flow rates need to be determined in order to successfully mold a successful plastic prototype.

Bridge Manufacturing

Once the prototype has been built it is often necessary to produce first articles for approval or small production runs for test marketing. At this stage, the cost and time to manufacture production-level tooling may not be reasonable, thus requiring a bridge manufacturing stage to produce several hundred or several thousand parts.

Production

MPM machines built by Electro-Matic in Solon, Ohio are designed to be an optimal solution for prototyping and bridge manufacturing of plastic injection molded parts. These machines are cost effective and offer a very high value with a small footprint and robust design. MPM Vertical Injection Molding machines are perfect for prototyping because of the utilization of V-Mold tooling technology. The V-mold is a two part tool that can allow for molding inserts and produce high clamping forces in an elegant design. The V-mold can easily be manually loaded and unloaded by the benchtop injection molding machine operator.

As V-molds are used for prototyping plastic parts and bridge production, they will not be required to produce millions of parts, so they can be machined out of softer steel or aluminum, and may be even produced with additive manufacturing techniques. This allows the designer to create many molds and concepts economically. With the ability to create and recreate molds, you can test your concept, materials, and mold performance easily and economically, and bring your design from prototype to production faster.