Choosing the right material for Injection Molding

Engineering built around manufacturing.

With more than 85000 sorts of injection moulding plastic materials to look over, you can envision how overwhelming it may be for product designers, business people, and others to pick the perfect material for manufacturing their item. It's much simpler to choose a material when you understand the general category plastics used for injection moulding fall into. Mechanical Design Services helps product designers simplify this task by selecting materials during the design phase. The six main materials used throughout the business are Polypropylene (PP); Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS); Polyamide (Nylon); High Density Polyethene (HDPE); Polycarbonate; and ABS + PC Blend.

Each material has wide varieties, so for this infographic, we will focus on hardness, adaptability, weight, and cost.

Injection molding material selection guide detailing essential criteria for choosing manufacturing plastics.
Key manufacturing factors to evaluate for plastic material selection before cutting an injection molding tool.
Four core deciding factors for injection molding plastics including material hardness, flexibility, part cost, and polymer weight.
Overview of the Shore Durometer Scale for plastics comparing Type A milder plastics with Type D harder plastics.
Comparison of injection molding material properties clarifying the difference between hardness and stiffness using ABS and Nylon examples.
Material selection rule emphasizing the importance of specifying injection molding plastics based on the final part application constraints.