The injection mold making project is injection molded parts for phone case. The plastic part material is TPE. This material is very flexible and durable. Customer’s product was in concept stage, so we gave customer the best solution and recommended suitable materials.

Basic part information:

• Plastic material: TPE
• Color: Black/Pink
• Production volume: 5K

Basic mold information:

• Mold type: 2-Plate
• Material: TPE

After confirming the information such as plastic material type of the plastic product, application, color, surface finished, demand quantity etc, we firstly did DFM for manufacturability. 1 day for DFM.

After DFM was confirmed and approved by customer, we started mold design and ordered mold steel and mold base for the mold making. Mold design drawing in 3D was send to customer for comments, and customer was satisfied with the design. So we start injection mold manufacturing. 4 weeks for mold manufacturing. We regularly reported mold making progress via sending pictures or video to customer.

About surface treatment, for phone case, there are many types of surface finish for this product, like polish, heavy texture, light texture, etc. Due to the color of customer’s product is black, so ACO Mold proposed to use light texture, it looks nice.

After injection mold manufacturing was done, we started T1 sampling. After T1 samples were gained, we tested the assembly with the iphone 7 plus, it is ok. So we sent T1 samples for customer’s comments.

Customer wants to have some changes in part design. The phone case needs to be about twice the thickness more rugged and the finish less polished more gripie in hand and at holding the iphone in the case really good. So we did modification on mold according to customer’s updated product design. Changing over-all wall thickness is a major part design changes, it means we have to rework the cavity side of the injection mold. In the next round samples, we used heavier texture. As for changing the wall thickness, we provided customer with 2 solutions. Outer over all inner size or the case inner size gets smaller while the outer size keeps the same. In our case, ACO Mold thinks changing the outer overall size will be easier way.

Due to customer added a new curved feature, so we need to add the steel for the mold by welding. We sent PPT to customer for better understanding. This was approved. So we did modification immediately.

Customer was very satisfied with new samples, he wanted to place order with 2500 pieces in black, 2500 pieces in pink. So we started large volume injection molding. It took 12 days for the large volume production of injection molded plastic parts, the case for the iphone 7 plus. At last, we got good news from customer everyone likes the quality and function of the phone case, I hope to be ordering more soon.

If your product is in concept stage, welcome to ACO Mold. ACO Mold is an injection molding manufacture with good reputation in China. Engineers from ACO Mold will give you the best solution and recommend suitable material.