What are the advantages of overmolding and insert molding?
2024-02-02 15:13:12
Although two-shot molding requires more complex design, processing, and material selection than single-shot molding, it offers significant advantages: 1. It allows a combination of materials to provide properties that a single resin cannot. 2. It can eliminate assembly steps, saving both time and money. 3. It can fuse materials in ways that assembly processes cannot. 4. Inserts increase the strength and durability of the part. Lower costs and faster production Overmolding can reduce the production costs. Standard injection molding can combine multiple parts into a single multi-cavity mold, and overmolding can produce individual parts composed of different materials without assembly. Mold production is more complex, but it eliminates the repetitive costs of assembling thousands of parts. There are a variety of methods for producing overmolded parts, and choosing the right one based on your needs. Time to market, total throughput, and likelihood of product changeovers can help determine which method is most effective. Application Overmolding is used in a wide range of industries from consumer goods to automotive and electronic components, but it is particularly suited to medical and healthcare applications. They may have to be sterilizable, resistant to chemical exposure, and meet standards including FDA, USP Class VI, ISO 10993, and biocompatibility. In many cases, no one resin can meet all requirements. For safety and sterility, multiple materials may have to fit together almost seamlessly, and overmolding excels in this area. There are many other reasons to use overmolding, including: The most common one is comfort and grip. Soft elastomers are often molded onto hard substrates to create safe, non-slip grips on a variety of handheld items, from hand tools to equipment. Since overmolding materials are typically elastomers, sealing, shock absorption, and vibration damping are also common applications. Another common application is aesthetics; the substrate can have a recessed pattern filled with overmolding material in a contrasting color to create text, logos or other designs. Overmolding can change the characteristics of a part's surface so that it has different electrical, thermal or other environmental qualities.
