• 2024-04-22
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Why is injection molding so expensive?

The high cost of injection molding is primarily due to the following factors:

1. Mold Production Cost: The molds used in injection molding are made from durable metals, often steel or aluminum, which are costly. Besides, creating these molds requires precision machining, which is time consuming and requires skilled labor – two factors that also contribute to the cost.

2. Design and Testing: Before mass production can begin, a significant amount of design and testing usually goes into developing a part suitable for injection molding. This includes paying for the labor of designers and engineers, the cost of prototyping and testing, and potentially the cost of redesigning and remaking the mold if issues are discovered during testing.

3. Cost of Machines: Injection molding machines themselves can be expensive, particularly those that offer high injection pressures, larger mold areas, or more precise control over process parameters. These machines also come with operational and maintenance costs.

4. Material Use: While injection molding can be quite efficient in the use of material, the raw materials used can also be costly, especially when using high-performance or specialist plastics.

5. SetUp and Running Time: Even though the actual molding process is quite fast, getting the mold set up correctly in the machine, testing it, and tweaking process parameters can take a significant amount of time.

While these costs can be substantial, when spread over a large enough production run, the per-part cost of injection molding is often quite low. This is why injection molding is typically used for large production runs of identical parts, where the high initial investment in the mold can be spread over many units.