Small, medium and micro-enterprises are often hesitant to take the risk of developing a new plastic product due to the high cost of conventional tooling. This results in many new product developments not being realised, because they are considered too risky to manufacture.
More than 70% of components in consumer products are manufactured using plastic materials. These components are produced by a plastic IM process. Conventionally, a set of steel moulds – into which molten plastic is injected to form the product – needs to be custom designed and manufactured. These moulds can cost hundreds or thousands of rand and could be several thousand times the unit cost of the plastic product manufactured.
It is also often difficult, when making use of conventional methods, to alter completed steel moulds if design changes are required and this is frequently the case during new product development.
But with the modular mould concept, which the Product Development Technology Station (PDTS) makes use of, it is possible to address these issues. Changes to the product can be made much easier and quicker, because this concept uses aluminium blocks or inserts for the product cavities instead of steel. Therefore changes are only made to the inserts and not the entire mould plate.
The PDTS can assist by implementing a modular mould concept, which reduces the capital risk that usually would have been taken in plastic product development. This also makes market piloting and entry easier.