Plastics & Injection Molding Manufacturer Blog

The year 2020 has been a tough one, especially for manufacturing. Duelargely to the COVID-19 pandemic, the manufacturing industry saw a decline of nearly 23 percent in 2020. The simultaneous shock and demand from shutdowns, the financial crisis, and increased workplace regulations have created the perfect storm for what’s likely to be the worst hit to manufacturing we’ve seen in decades.

Consider this scenario: Despite your best efforts, your custom injection molder is missing deadlines or producing or assembling your project at an unacceptable error rate. Perhaps it's just costing you a lot more than you had budgeted. In any case, it just isn't working out. What are your options, and can you really afford to switch to a new manufacturing partner?

Most engineers do not have ways to attach notes, tolerances, colors, etc. to a 3-D model, so they typically use the 2-D drawing to communicate important information. This blog post is an explanation of why 3-D CAD data is used as primary data and why it is critical for 2-D prints to not conflict with the source data. 

The arrival of 3-D CAD modeling and direct CNC machining have allowed mold-makers to program the machining of molds directly from the 3-D model. This has significantly helped with saving time and money in both design and machining over old manual efforts in mold construction. Due to these technologies, most tool build times are in the sub-10 weeks range, as opposed to as much as twice that in the not too distant past.