How to improve productivity in injection molding

 

How to increase productivity in injection molding

 

If you have a plastic injection molding facility. You wanted to improve productivity and you had experienced people doing it. What projects would you choose and in what order? For example Shorter setup times, scrap reduction, injection mold preventative maintenance, optimum run size, etc.

Making wise and efficient use of your materials is another key tip for improving your injection molding process and the quality of your finished product. One thing to try is reducing the shot size. You're probably tempted to use the largest shot size your equipment will allow, but take a moment to re-evaluate.

 

Ways to improve

1) Allow specific injection molding machines to work on specific plastic parts. For this, you can concentrate on manpower and have specifically trained people for specific parts. EG. components for Apple products must be halogen-free. So machines cannot be used for other products that have halogen in them. And transparent plastic parts to be used on machines for transparent parts. So should also set aside machines for injection mold trials and machines for production.

 

2) Loading and unloading of injection molds can be time at 1 hour. This defers between big injection molds and small injection molds. How quickly this can be done really depends on the facilities and the setup team. If you are running long term productions. Setting up time may not be a big issue.

 

3) Scrap reduction should be monitored before an injection mold is commissioned for mass production. Improving injection molding productivity. In fact, after the injection mold trials were completed. The injection mold should go through a small batch production run of about 5k parts to be fully monitored. How the tooling is keeping up with the production and the amount of scrap it gathers. Basically, the amount of scrap during a mold trial should be kept below 20%. This includes purging the barrel. And attempts to fill the injection mold. For bigger molds, this may run differently.

 

Monitoring of production rates.

 

1). If your production is modulated by lots of employees and their rates, you have to monitor them. When we started paying incentive bonuses for increased rates beyond the minimum amount we felt we had to have to show a minimum return. The numbers went through the roof. When employees can get rewarded for their hard work in dollars, they will work much harder.

 

2). Mold maintenance technically should be done at different stages, simple maintenance, and comprehensive maintenance. Simple maintenance to be done within 1 or 2 months' time. This is to remove debris and clean up the injection mold. This should take a day or maybe have a day to do. Comprehensive maintenance should be done at least once a year. This is to check the injection mold for damages and perform necessary changes. The time allocated depends on how severe the injection mold wears. The timing can change based on the confidence you have with your injection molds.