What is an injection mold and why do I need it

Injection Mold is a kind of tool that turns plastic materials into plastic parts with designed shape a,size, and surface finishing in a large quantity and high efficiency way, plastic parts made through injection mold is common to see in our daily life, plastic housings for most of the electronic products,household application,inter/outer parts of Auto cars etc.

Injection mold can be expensive and time-assuming to make,it is not necessary for you to get involved in mold making and own an injection mold only when:

Unique design to be customized

Injection mold is about customization so if you want something different than what is existed in the market, a customized plastic products through newly made mold will make your product to be outstanding than competitors.

Large quantity demand  

You better have exact demand or at least confidence you are going to sell enough quantity of the new product to general good enough sales to cover the mold cost, it can be risky because the mold cost is a upfront expense, your initial quantity should start at several hundreds and thousands

What is the plastic product customizing process like:

When importer need to purchase customized plastic products in China, the China mold supplier would probably charge you mold cost and ask deposit before product production, let’s figure out what’s is really about.

Mold making would require multiple manufacturing processing ways, such as EDM, wire cut, drilling, milling, CNC turning, polishing etc. It normally takes 3-4 weeks, and it could take even much more time when the mold structure is complex and size is big. To make sure everything is in trail, ask the schedule and track the processing once in a week. Payment term usually is set like below:

50% deposit for mold, 50% balance after sample is approved.
50% deposit for mass production, 50% balance after production finished.

Who owns the mold
You are the investor and the mold belongs to you. But since the mold stays in China mold factory for injection molding, it’s tricky to control the mold, sometimes the supplier would do production with your mold without your authorization, you’d better do regular inspection. Most important, when you do contract with supplier, make sure you have agreement how many units of the mold are able to produce, define the compensation term clear what if the mold breaks before it reach the guaranteed units produced.