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Prototype Tooling Lifespan: Factors Affecting Durability and Maintenance of Molds
Savvy businesses rely on rapidly produced prototype injection-molded parts to innovate and efficiently bring new products to market. While these molds can produce thousands of parts (even tens of thousands), they are not nearly as durable as production molds. Factors such as tooling material, design complexity, and maintenance practices affect ...
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Prototype Injection Molding for Critical Function Testing
The Challenge Our customer was developing an In Vitro Diagnostic (IVD) cartridge that required assembling a valving component to the cartridge to control fluidic flow for the assay. Standard means for assembling these types of valves into disposable IVD cartridges includes fasteners, ultrasonic welding, laser welding, heat staking and other ...
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Where Can I Get a Prototype Made? Accelerating Product Development with Protoshop’s Prototype Molding Solutions
Developing prototypes is a pivotal phase in new product development. Prototype parts provide the first tangible models to evaluate ergonomic design attributes, conduct engineering tests to validate strength and function, refine specifications based on physical rather than virtual models, and gather direct customer feedback on potential products. Thorough evaluation at ...
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Speed vs. Quality in Prototype Tooling: Finding the Right Balance
Prototyping is one of the most important steps in the product development process. Prototypes allow product developers to find design flaws and/or test different design options quickly by providing tangible models that can be evaluated for form, fit, and functionality before committing to full-scale production tooling. Different types of prototypes ...
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Cost-Effective Injection Mold Fabrication: Balancing Quality & Budget
The quality of an injection molding tool directly impacts product quality and overall production costs. Balancing the need for high-quality molds with budget constraints is a challenge product developers and manufacturers contend with continually. Strategies for achieving cost-effective mold fabrication without compromising quality will maximize the value of an injection ...
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Protoshop’s Dylann Ceriani on “The Selling Podcast” with Mike Williams and Scott Schlofman
On her guest appearance on The Selling Podcast, Dylann Ceriani, co-founder of Protoshop, chats with hosts Scott Schlofman and Mike Williams, providing a unique sales perspective from the standpoint of an engineer. Though Dylann loves technical work, she has stepped into sales out of necessity and devotion to her position ...
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Prototype Injection Molding for Product Designers: A Comprehensive Guide to Success
As the industry of product design evolves, innovation and efficiency have become more significant. Prototype injection molding offers designers flexibility, speed, and precision in bringing their concepts to life. In this comprehensive guide, we embark on a journey to understand prototype injection molding, equipping product designers with a robust toolkit ...
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From Concept to Completion: A Step by Step Guide to Prototype Mold Fabrication
Prototyping is a critical step in product development, allowing product developers and engineers to create physical manifestations of product concepts and test them before committing to full-scale, expensive production molds. However, prototyping can be a major investment, requiring custom mold fabrication, material selection, process setting, and quality testing. For manufactured ...
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Navigating the Overmolding Process and Complex Prototyping Challenges
The overmolding process is a specialized manufacturing technique that involves molding one material over another to create a single part. This technique often adds soft-touch surfaces on hard plastics, combines different materials for aesthetic appeal, or encapsulates metal components. Overmolding is used widely across various industries, including consumer electronics, automotive, ...
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Overcoming Challenges in Prototype Tooling for Injection Molding
Injection molding is the primary manufacturing process for producing plastic parts across most industries. The process involves injecting molten plastic into a mold cavity, after which it cools and solidifies into the final part geometry. While full-scale production injection molds are meticulously engineered, less sophisticated prototype molds play an equally ...
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