AIM Processing Small Plastic Parts Blog

AIM Processing has acquired Technical Molded Products, solidifying its position as a leading injection molder in the western United States.

We are thrilled to announce that AIM Processing will be exhibiting at the 2024 Long Beach Manufacturing Trade Show in September! This premier event is a fantastic opportunity to showcase our innovative solutions and connect with manufacturing engineers, design engineers, manufacturing management and other industry professionals.

Maintaining proper wall thickness is one of the most important aspects of designing custom injection molded parts. Overly thick walls not only waste material, they’re also more likely to exhibit part defects such as sink marks. On the other hand, overly thin walls are prone to warping and cracking, while also generally lacking the strength necessary for a durable end product.

In the plastics manufacturing industry today, automation is the name of the game if you want to be competitive. Automated injection molding machines, robotic part handlers, automatic loading/unloading systems… In fact, automated manufacturing technology has become increasingly common throughout the American manufacturing sector as a whole. Essentially, these newer technologies help US manufacturersoperate as lean, efficient and productive as possible, thus meeting the new demands of onshoring while remaining cost competitive to the global marketplace.

Many factors go into determining the overall cost of producing your custom injection molded parts. First there’s the product design, development, and iterative prototyping process if required. Once your design is finalized, next up is the tooling cost to build your mold that will be used to make your product. Even once manufacturing is underway, a number of factors will still dramatically affect your ongoing production costs: material type, material usage, and machine cycle time to name a few.

Today’s complex injection molded parts often require more complicated designs with more contours and more walls throughout. This can complicate fill patterns, cause unexpected voids/gas traps, and introduce warp. As a result, it has become increasingly critical to ensure uniformity so that the end products offer the expected strength and performance they are designed for. That’s where mold flow analysis comes in.

Embarking on a new custom injection molding project can be intimidating, especially for customers who are new to the industry. If you’ve never seen the process through from start to finish, it can seem extremely complex and even overwhelming with all of the details you’re expected to bring to the table.

Today’s advanced injection molding techniques take an intelligent, disciplined approach to the manufacturing process that ensures both higher precision and efficiency. Making the right choice between hot runner manifold systems and conventional cold runners is just one of the many considerations we make. Nevertheless, it’s one of the most critical decisions in order to optimize our injection molding methods for your unique products and volume requirements.

Maintaining precision and repeatability is crucial to any custom injection molding project, especially when it comes to small parts with potentially complex designs. With small part injection molding, even the tiniest variance in a dimension outside of a tolerance range can ruin a whole run of products.

Plastic overmolding is a complex manufacturing process that involves multiple steps of injecting two different materials into a single final, molded part. As you can imagine, adding additional steps and materials into the injection molding process comes with some unique complications and challenges.