Injection Moulding Small Quantities

I have to give you an A+ on that answer. Aluminum tooling makes real sense for short run mold-making. I would have nothing better to offer tony that that.

Why, Thank You.

Because, you are welcome!

Just be sure to check the shipment for stowaways. Spiders, cone shells, crocs, snakes, gympies, Abbo chieftans. The usual.

We use just a couple of mouldings in our products &, even in production, quantities are low, I think we buy in 50s & 100s. We use aluminium tooling as has been suggested. The tooling for a hand sized housing was about £3000 & has been producing occasional batches for around 5 years. Try to use a material that the moulder is already running, we needed particular electrical properties & had to buy a batch of raw material for the moulder to use. I think that 1st batch lasted 3 1/2 years.

We used a "rapid prototyping" company in Australia for many parts. They 3D printed the master part for us, then made silicon tooling from that. Typically good for around 3000 shots, but if nursed could get up to 10k shots. The good thing was, once they had the 3D master they could make additional moulds from that. One advice, the 3D Master need to be at the "hot" size of your end product so that material shrinkage gies you an end product at your desired size. Thus the prototype company needs to know your material details BEFORE making the model AND you need to understand that the model they send you to polish will be sized for that characteristic. You could let them polish it for you, but then your end finish is dependant on how you have specified it to them. Aluminium tools were OK for up to 20,000 pieces provided the moulding company respected the material limitations. You could spend a little more and get steel inserts in the tool to set the closed spacing of the tool at the risk of a little parting line flash. If you're going to aluminium, then I'd suggest get the tools made from steel, but just not get the heat treatment done. Then later if quantity warrants, you can get the heat treatment done for higher volumes.