Attention practicing industrial designers and ID students: Today marks the start of the National Week of Injection Molding, held by the Society of Plastic Engineers. Every day this week, from 9am to noon Eastern time, injection molding experts will deliver online presentations on the subject. Some examples:

Simulation Workflows to Improve Plastic Part Design

"There are numerous challenges involved with designing and manufacturing a plastic part. Autodesk has been focusing on developing tools to aid in the early design stages of a plastic part to allow engineers to make better design decisions earlier in the development process. This presentation will highlight how the injection molding simulation tools from Autodesk can be used to optimize plastic part designs and ensure successful production, ultimately driving innovation in the field of plastics manufacturing."

Cost-efficient Manufacturing of Multi-Material/Functional Parts

"Advanced multi-material structures are known for their superior characteristics due to the synergy of different materials. However, the multi-stage and high cost of their manufacturing processes are the main drawbacks in expanding their application in cost-effective industries such as automotive. To counter these challenges, hybrid manufacturing approaches can be utilized to overcome limitations associated with earlier technologies, while adapting themselves to incorporate new materials and unique features.

"Moreover, hybrid manufacturing increases the complexity and technical requirements of the system, thereby making product imitation difficult. Motivated by the aforementioned aspects, several manufacturing concepts have recently been developed by this research group based on various integrations of injection, forming, foaming, and additive manufacturing processes, which will be introduced in this presentation. While these integration concepts were initially proposed to overcome the manufacturing difficulties of multi-material components, the unique additional features provided by these concepts hypothesize such hybrid molding technologies as a promising pathway toward cost-efficient manufacturing of multi-functional products."

Design Considerations for Spinstack Molding

"For over two decades Cube Mold (Spin Stack) technology has facilitated the injection molding of complex part geometries on a single injection molding machine. Like Stack Molds, multiple parting lines are available to scale cavitation. However, unlike Stack Molds, the center stack of a Cube Mold rotates. Indexing the center stack exposes parts on the non-injection sides of the center Cube "on cycle." This allows for additional operations like cooling, insertion of components or decorations for over-molding, part assembly, and ejection thereby increasing production output in a smaller plant-footprint to yield lower unit pricing.

"In this talk, Camille Sackett of Acceded Mold & Tool Company, will highlight the advantages of the technology and share case studies from contract manufacturers to empower viewers to identify applications for the technology."

Registration is $149 for SPE members, and $349 for non-members. The schedule is available here.