Micron Solutions Blog

When you’re getting ready to begin the injection molding process, the first choice you make—and one of the most crucial decisions—is which plastic mold manufacturing partner you’ll select. The partner you choose should, of course, deliver on all your mold requirements—but they should also prototype your part, help you with part design adjustments, warranty their work, and much more. And most importantly, the right partner will ensure you don’t end up with a useless mold that doesn’t produce quality parts—or, as we like to call a faulty mold—a boat anchor.

If you need a plastic part molded with extreme precision—for example, to ensure there’s no air leak between two molded sections or to be certain there’s no visible seal gap line—you likely require precision molding. The difference between a typical injection molded part and a precision molded part is the tolerance, or acceptable range of variation in dimension: While the majority of injection molded parts have a tolerance of +/- .005″, precision molding holds tolerances between +/- .002″ and +/- .001″ (or less, in some cases).

A single-use product is meant to be used or applied once and then discarded. The term “single-use” is sometimes intended to mean “disposable,” though this isn’t always the case. A bullet and a booster rocket, for example, are both single-use products—but most people wouldn’t refer to them as a disposable. But many medical products, like tongue depressors and test vials, are perfect examples of single-use, disposable products. 

Rapid tooling is, simply, the creation of a mold in a shortened timeline.

Rapid tooling got its start in the 1990s, when engineers involved in injection molding wanted to see if they could build molds in a matter of hour or days instead of the weeks or months a machined mold would take. A rapid-tooled mold is ideal for prototyping a part and molding a few hundred plastic parts before full-scale, high-volume production starts.

Blow molding vs. injection molding—what’s the difference? Both are common methods used to create plastic parts. And while some parts require both blow-molded and injection-molded components—for example, a medical device with a blow-molded container attached to an injection molded apparatus, or a military application with a blow-molded “payload” packet fabricated inside an injection molded projectile—the two methods primarily serve different markets.

If you’re creating a plastic part, it’s important to know what type of injection molding process your part will require. Do you know if your part needs to be molded in a cleanroom environment, or whether you should use a vertical or horizontal injection molding machine? 

From advancements that have helped the industry for over 40 years to the latest cutting-edge innovations, there are a number of interesting plastic injection technologies out there that could be used to bring your prototype into production.

Hello! We’re Micron Products.

Founded in 1972, we are a full-service contract manufacturing and injection molding company based in Massachusetts. The shop we acquired at that time was founded in 1925, making us one of the oldest companies in the injection molding industry.

As an engineer, your focus is on taking a product idea and figuring out how to get it manufactured so it fits all your specifications and stays within your budget. But before you select an injection molding partner, it’s a good idea to brush up on what the injection molding process looks like.

If your company requires plastic injection molding services to create a plastic part, one of the first—and most critical—decisions to make is whether you’re going to go with a plastic injection mold service in the U.S. or one based overseas. While many countries offer mold-making services, China is the primary player in this market.