Recently we had done a succeed mold and molding project for a US company, it’s a type of a remote controller with silicone cover, project went smooth but I would like to summarize it and point out a few key points, first we take a look on the project.

It’s consisted with front case, back case, cover, and silicone pad, there is a BOM for the whole product, but due to Non-disclosure agreement, we can’t give more details how it was designed.

Basic part information:

• Part size: 80x45x30mm
• Plastic material: ABS /silicone
• Finish: SPI-B-2
• Color: blue/black
• Production volume: 10K

We made one 1+1+1 family mold for the front case, back case, cover, actually the front case and cover are in blue, back case is in black, the question is how to do 2 different color in one mold? — we design a turntable gate so we can mold one color by sealing the other cavities, by this way we only need one mold, even the molding productivity is a little lower but given the cost of an extra mold and only 10K production volume, this is still an economic way to go.

Basic mold information:

• Mold type: 2-Plate
• Gate type: Side Gate
• Cavity number: 1+1+1
• Material: ABS
• Shrinkage: 5/1000
• Molding Machine (Tons): 120T
• Second Process: none

Still we start with DFM before mold design, we cross check with customers by DFM report for some important information like, parting line, gate position, ejection, etc.

Then mold design in 3D, some of the mold factories prefer to do 2D mold design first and then 3D mold design, in actual practice, this is actually Inefficiency way to approach.

Mold molding took us 20 days, see how the mold look like on injection machine.

 
How samples looks like: 

There is one more 6 cavity mold for the silicone cover, silicone mold is just quite easy and cheap, most tricky part is the secondary process, the silicone case usually need to be oil painted. Plastic part oil painting could be a time assuming and high scrap rate process, it required to pay good attention to.

 
The final blue colored have been changed once according to customer’s request, see how it looks like after final assembly.