Low Cost Injection Molds

Product Design is able to provide low cost P20 tooling from Taiwan for our customers at a savings of 25% or more versus comparable US built tooling. These tools are built to US or metric standards to meet customer requirements. Injection molds can be built for plastic parts that you have designed or we can create new plastic part designs along with the molds.

We are not just another agent or reseller for offshore mold suppliers. Most mold building problems originate in a poor or incomplete part design. Our in house plastic parts design experience helps us start our mold build projects with a solid underlying part design. Our service includes a review of your parts for moldability, cooling analysis, and creation of mold specifications. The results of our analysis are then sent to Taiwan where molds are built to our specifications. The images show on this page are a few of the parts currently being molded with our low cost Taiwanese injection molds.

The Image at right shows an 18" tall polyethylene construction cone weighting about 2 lbs. being molded in a P20 steel mold of our design. This mold has flood cooling of the core with internal baffles to insure turbulent flow on the cooled core surfaces. This turbulent coolant flow over a large surface area significantly reduces the cycle time of this deep and difficult to cool part. Notice that the stripper plate will be pulled by the side chains during the ejection phase. This feature allows the mold to fit in a normal length molding machine when in the full open position and run full automatic without operator intervention. The mold is shown as it was being proven in Taiwan prior to shipment to a US customer. This is an excellent example of the type and size of mold in which we can achieve very significant savings for our customers.

Designing the mold is only part of the problem in getting good Taiwanese tooling. You must have good vendors, a good business and communications method, and experienced import specialists. We provide all of this through our joint venture with KR Industries. KR Industries has been procuring plastic injection molds and plastic parts from Taiwan for it's own products for over 15 years. This experience combined with many trips to Taiwan gives them the importing experience required to turn an overseas tooling purchase into a routine operation. Based on this experience we can provide tooling FOB Taiwan if you are an experienced importer or we can handle the customs clearing and freight forwarding to provide you with injection molds delivered to your molder's dock.

P20 Injection Molds

The majority of the injection molds that we procure for our clients are of the type commonly known as "P20" steel molds. These molds have the core and cavity cut from prehardened tool steels such as P20 or PX5. Our P20 molds usually price at 50% to 60% of the price of US built H13 or similar tools (savings of 25% or more versus US built P20 tooling) and can be procured faster than H13 tools due to fewer heat treating and grinding operations. If you plan to be molding a few hundred thousand parts or less or have short product life cycles these are the right mold for the job.

Injection Mold Cooling

Cooling time is by far the most dominate time consumer in the injection molding cycle. The primary complaint that US molders have with any non domestic injection mold is that the mold cooling is poorly designed and therefore they are stuck with a mold that has a long cycle time. A long cycle time means that the molder must charge more for the same part. At Product Design we use our in house thermal analysis capabilities to specify the cooling design for the tools that we have built in Taiwan. This is done by using the thermal analysis capabilities of Cosmos/M FEA software. The result is a low cost tool that will run fast and keep your cost per part as low as possible.

Beryllium Copper Cores

In molds were normal good cooling design is not enough we can provide molds with Beryllium Copper cores, flood cooling, heat pipes, or thermal pins to further enhance cooling. These features can reduce the cycle time of a normally slow running part significantly and as a result usually pay for themselves fairly quickly.

Are Taiwanese Injection Molds Right For Your Project?

Significant savings can be achieved with our Taiwanese injection molds if your parts are large or medium sized such as the construction cone mold shown above or if you have a large number of different parts in your product. Our experience has shown that procuring a single mold for a small part from Taiwan or other country in Asia is usually not cost effective once you consider shipping, duty, etc. and the fact that time is money. Injection molds are a classic example of "you have to spend money to make money" and represent a significant up front investment that can usually only be justified by firms of significant size. Most of the injection molds that we sell are typically priced between $10,000 and $75,000.

Call to learn more about how we can help you reduce your injection mold tooling costs with our low cost P20 steel injection molds. We will explain our process, give you references to molders currently using our molds, and help you evaluate if your product and volume is right for our molds. See our ads in the 2002 Thomas Register, in Design Perspectives Magazine, and in "PD3" the newsletter of the Product Design and Development Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers.

Product Design, Inc.
5133 Washington St., Suite 9
Downers Grove, Illinois 60515

Phone: 630.663.1642
Fax: 630.663.4552
Toll Free: 888.609.6199

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