more about Miniature and Micro Injection Moulding

Miniaturisation of parts as well as complete systems is a trend that is happening throughout the world. To keep up with this ever growing trend, manufacturing systems have also had to develop in order to manufacture the new components. Micro moulding produces parts that have a shot weight of 1 gram and less. Shot weights are so small that tool design is very complicated due to the minute nature of all the moving parts involved in the process. Designers must take great care to ensure that the tool cannot damage itself during production and can be left as an automated process.

Parts with slightly greater shot weight than that of micro moulding are not classed as being micro but they are still considerably smaller than most parts that are injection moulded. Tools for these parts are easier to manufacture as the moving parts do not have to be as small as with micro moulding and as such they are quicker and less expensive to produce. In many situations it will prove much more cost effective to mould small parts in a machine that has micro moulding capabilities than it will be to run the same part in a multi-cavity tool in a normal sized injection moulding machine.

aki‘s new Babyplast micro-moulding capability has been put to good use producing small mouldings that would not have been cost effective to run on a standard injection moulding machine. These cost savings come from the much reduced tool fitment and machine set up times, as well as the cost savings in actual tool manufacture.

Benefits of Miniature And Micro Injection Moulding

Defined colours – When moulding using a micro-moulding machine the length of time that the melted polymer is in the barrel of the machine for is much shorter than for standard injection moulding machines. By not over heating the material the colour is not lost from the polymer and parts produced will have far brighter and more accurate colour reproduction.
Reduced tool sizes – The tools used for micro moulding are significantly smaller than those used for standard Injection Moulding, for example a 3 or 4 cavity micro moulding tool can compete with a 16 cavity standard Injection Moulding tool. This means that manufacturing costs for these tools is much lower and also helps to keep time required for a tool change to a minimum. This means that both set up costs and running costs can be kept to a minimum.
Reduced part cost – Due to their small size micro-moulding machines require considerably less energy than their standard sized counterparts. This combined with the reduced cost of manufacturing tooling means that the cost of a product can be kept down and ensure prices can be kept competitive against standard Injection Moulding.
Increased part accuracy – Due to the increased accuracy required for micro-moulding parts accuracy will be significantly better than that associated with conventional injection moulding. The reliability of this accuracy is also improved over conventional moulding giving a greater level of consistency. This combination of improvements means far fewer quality issues and less rejected mouldings leading to further cost reductions.
Improved cycle times – Due to the low shot weights associated with micro-moulding cycle times are much shorter than with conventional injection moulding. The reduced movement associated with micro-moulding machines also means they are able to carry out moulding processes more quickly than a standard injection moulding machine. Reduced cycle times mean less time spent completing orders which means further cost reductions.

Further information