There are many different common types of plastics used in the injection molding industry today. And for many projects, there will be numerous suitable plastics to choose from.
Of course, choosing the best thermoplastic material for your project isn’t simply a case of going with the strongest and most durable option, or choosing the cheapest suitable material. You have to carefully consider the use cases for your end products, all of the performance requirements, potential reliability issues that may arise, as well as the overall material cost, availability, and sustainability.
Plastic injection molding is sometimes compared to extrusion when customers are searching for the most optimized manufacturing method for their products. While the injection molding and extrusion processes are very different, they are both capable of producing high-quality parts with complex designs.
Nevertheless, there are certain types of products – or production goals – which are much better suited for the injection molding process, and vice versa. Learn more about these two unique manufacturing services below, including the common advantages and product applications.
While injection molding services are often compared or even cross-shopped with vacuum forming, which is a specialized form of thermoforming. However, the two manufacturing processes are actually quite different, and each is uniquely optimized for different types of projects.
If you’d like to learn more about how the injection molding process works, check out our Brief Introduction to Injection Molding as well as our Plastic Injection Molding Services page. Or if you’d like to delve deeper into the advantages of injection molding specifically compared to vacuum forming, check out our comparison of the two processes below.