Molding Materials
Choosing the right material for your custom plastic injection molding project is an important decision. Before choosing a material, you have multiple items to consider: Part function, application, durability, flexibility and color. Plastic molding materials look and behave differently, so your material choice affects your part’s performance and characteristics.
Even the material’s shrink rate needs to be considered. If the plastic injection parts are molded out of one material for the initial production, changing material for future production runs may affect the part’s dimensions. That’s because a different material may have a different shrink rate.
A list of the most commonly used injection molding materials is given in the table below.
Material
Description
Benefits
Applications
Common
thermoplastic with good impact resistance and toughness.
Thermoplastic
polymer used for a wide number of applications.
Dimensionally
stable thermoplastic with high stiffness and low friction.
Thermoplastic
material with good temperature resistance and impact strength.
Blend of PC
and ABS that creates strong parts for a variety of applications.
PVC is a
polymer with good insulation properties, high hardness, and good mechanical
properties.
Polymer
material that is durable with high elongation and good abrasion resistance.
Material with
resistance to breakage often used for transparent applications.
Light weight
material popular for its high impact strength and toughness.
Thermoplastic
with high heat resistance and excellent mechanical properties.
