Hi-Tech Mold & Engineering, Inc. is located in Rochester Hills, Michigan. Its 200 employees work on components for vehicles, appliances, medical devices, and solutions for the aerospace and defense industries.

Since this process involves very low pressure and temperatures, the mold can be made from inexpensive materials like plastic or wood. Surface finish is important as the formed product picks up small details on the mold.

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Thermoforming involves creating a mold of your product over which a thin sheet of plastic is heated and formed using vacuum, pressure or mechanical force. The plastic sheet takes the shape of the mold and extra material is then trimmed off.

Alwin offers design and product development services to create customized solutions. This Clintonville, Wisconsin, manufacturer has 150 employees and also produces commercial towel and napkin dispensers.

According to MNI, the century-old data compiler that powers IndustrySelect's industrial database subscription, the plastic injection mold industry is a fairly small and specialized sector with 555 US-based companies. Half of these manufacturers are located in the Midwest.

A startup developing a new product from scratch faces high uncertainty of whether their product will be successful in the market or not. Therefore, it is hard for them to invest several thousand dollars for injection molding of an unproven product idea.

In some cases, CNC machining is also used as a secondary operation in combination with another manufacturing processes. For example, CNC machining can be used as a secondary operation on 3D printed parts or metal castings to achieve tighter tolerances.

Located in Boyne City, Michigan, LexaMar Corp. employs 400 people. This manufacturer uses rubber and plastic to produce exterior parts for the automotive industry.

This emphasis on the domestic market and local suppliers could indicate a potential for expansion on new markets for plastic mold manufacturers.

Using 3D printed molds as an alternative to metal molds in injection molding is a fairly new process. As the quality and surface finish of 3D Printing continuously improves, 3D Printed molds for low volume injection molding are being pioneered by companies like Stratasys with their Polyjet printing and Formlabs using their SLA printers.

Meanwhile, the global market for injection molded plastics is expected to reach a value of $473.4 billion by the year 2027. Currently, the industry is valued at $339.3 billion.

• 8% of plastic mold manufacturers import raw materials, which is slightly lower than the 11% average across all manufacturers.• 76% of plastic mold makers focus on domestic distribution. This is slightly higher than the 70% of all manufacturers that sell their products on the domestic market.

CNC machining is a highly reliable process and it is as relevant today as it was when first conceived in the 1950s. It is one of the most versatile manufacturing process in terms of the number of materials that can be processed in a CNC machine - plastics, wood, metals, ceramics and many more.

3D Printing is suitable as a prototyping process and for very low volume production runs. It requires no upfront investment into creating molds and can provide lead-times as short as a few hours. This makes 3D Printing a preferred choice for quick iterations during the development of plastic products, and sometimes for metal and composite materials too.

This process is great for cost-effective production runs of 20-200 parts to test the market, gather feedback from early adopters and test the engineering and design requirements.

CompanyCityState Number of EmployeesPlastek Industries, Inc.EriePA850LexaMar Corp.Boyne CityMI400Jones Plastic & Engineering Co., LLCLouisvilleKY300Hi-Tech Mold & Engineering, Inc.Rochester HillsMI200MMI Engineered SolutionsSalineMI192American Tool & Mold, Inc.ClearwaterFL180Ironwood Plastics, Inc.IronwoodMI155Seaway Plastics Engineering, LLCPort RicheyFL151AlwinClintonvilleWI150Decatur Mold, Tool & Engineering, Inc.North VernonIN150

There are several different types of 3D Printing technologies both for plastics and metals with their own pros and cons. FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling), SLA (Stereolithography) and SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) are the ones that are most commonly used in product development.

Urethane Casting is an excellent alternative to injection molding, but without the high upfront costs or long lead times of injection molding.

This Louisville, Kentucky, manufacturer has 300 employees. Jones Plastic & Engineering Co., LLC uses injection molding techniques to produce automotive parts, packaging, electronic components and products for the medical industry.

Below are some alternatives to injection molding that allow manufacturing low volume parts(10s or 100s of), cost effectively so that you can test the market, receive feedback from users, present your product to investors, run promotions and more.

Located in North Vernon, Indiana, Decatur Mold, Tool & Engineering, Inc. employs 150 people to produce military aircraft parts, car seats and automotive components.

SLA and SLS technologies are slightly more costlier than FDM, but provide tighter tolerances and better finishing. There are other specialized 3D printing technologies that allow printing with multiple colors or materials in the same part.

It should be noted that the cost-effectiveness of manufacturing process at a certain volume is highly dependent on the part geometry. For quantities approaching 300-500 parts, injection molding with lower quality steel or aluminum molds can be considered depending on the part geometry. It is a good idea to involve suitable engineering or manufacturing professionals who can guide you early in your product development process.

Seaway Plastics Engineering, LLC has 151 employees and is located in Port Richey, Florida. This company specializes in engineering and low-volume runs. It creates products for the packaging, defense, medical, transportation and electronics sectors among others.

The industrial marketplace IndustryNet continues to see heightened domestic sourcing activity, including greater demand for plastic injection molding services, which reported thousands of searches from industrial buyers interested in plastic injection molding in 2020. Year-over-year category searches on the industrial marketplace IndustryNet were up 27% in 2020, while requests-for-quotes rose 102.1% and catalog downloads increased 21%. This trend reflects the growing number of manufacturers looking for domestic supplies, including plastic injection molding companies.

Plastics are an integral part of consumer products, everything from your smartphone and laptop to your car, contains some amount of plastic parts.

Today we're taking a quick look at some additional facts on the plastic injection molding industry and exploring the top ten plastic injection companies in the United States.

A 'master pattern' of the product is created using CNC Machining or high-resolution 3D Printing with the required surface finish. This pattern is then used to create a urethane or silicone mold into which a suitable resin can be poured in order to create multiple copies of the product. The mold typically lasts for around 20 runs.

Injection molding is a commonly used process for manufacturing plastic parts, but the high upfront costs of the molds makes it viable only at high volumes. So if you are looking to develop only a few prototypes of your product, injection molding is not the right way to go, instead, here are the types of companies that can help you build physical product prototypes.

3D Printed molds can prove to be a low cost way for testing production-grade materials and processes at low quantities but it is currently limited to small parts and yet to be adopted by the industry at large.

This method provides a wide range of resins that can mimic 'production-grade' materials ranging from soft elastomers like silicone rubber to hard plastics like ABS, along with ‘production-grade’ quality.

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The resulting parts can be used as 'appearance models', for marketing and promotional shots, presented to investors or potential customers. Here is a more in-depth guide to prototyping for hardware startups.

Setup costs involved in CNC machining, especially for complex geometry, are higher than that of 3D Printing. It is therefore more suited for low to mid-volume production (upto a few hundred parts depending on part geometry) with fast turnaround times as opposed to one-off production.

3D printed parts inherently have a 'layered' surface due to the way 3D printing works. But this surface can be sanded and painted to achieve the desired surface finish.

Plastek Industries, Inc. has locations in four countries. Its Erie, Pennsylvania, headquarters is the largest plastic mold manufacturing facility in the US with 850 employees. They manufacture products like packaging for the beauty and cosmetics industry, food and beverage products, stock packaging options, and pharmaceutical packaging.

Due to the high tolerance, fast turnaround and wide range of materials available for CNC machining, it is used to create accurate molds, dies or patterns for other manufacturing processes involving molding, casting, forming or extruding.

Editor's Note: A version of this post was originally published in June 3, 2020. It has been updated to include current trends and statistics.

Outdesign Co is a product design & development company helping clients across 15+ countries turn their ideas into “World-Firsts” and award-winning products.

As U.S. manufacturers continue to contend with disruptions to the global supply chain, manufacturers are looking to source more supplies at home. One study found that 62% of manufacturers plan to source more supplies domestically in 2021.

Located in Saline, Michigan, MMI Engineered Solutions employs 192 people. This manufacturer has an in-house design team and uses injection and blow mold techniques to produce powertrain, exterior and interior parts for the automotive industry.

American Tool & Mold, Inc. produces plastic molds used by other manufacturers. This Clearwater, Florida, company has 180 employees and can create customized molds for a wide range of applications, including multi-cavity molds and precision molds.

Thermoforming, however, cannot be used to produce highly complex parts which the other processes can. It is therefore limited to 'relatively' simple products like packaging trays, large panels of appliances, vehicle door panels, dashboards, simple product housings etc.

This Ironwood, Michigan, manufacturer creates molds for products with precise requirements. Ironwood Plastics, Inc. and its 155 employees use advanced techniques like pressure monitoring, laser scanning and mold flow analysis to create specialized molds.