Elite Mold & Engineering provides the consistency and precision required to help fabricate your vision. Along with our complete plastic injection molding and CNC Machining services; we bring unparalleled focus, experience, and technical expertise.  As a result, we ensure reliable quality parts. Above all our team is focused on meeting your plastic injection molding needs. Therefore whether it is prototype or low-volume; we are dedicated to making your project a success.

Jim Hannon retired recently after 39 years as an electrical engineer for Rockwell Collins. Now he can concentrate on amateur science projects and on making things in his woodworking and machine shop — especially things that are too expensive to buy, or that just don’t exist.

The injection lever (D) pivots on a½”-diameter steel rod (E). I beefed this up by drilling larger holes in the frame and turning some steel bushings (F) on my lathe to support the rod. The bushings also keep the lever centered over the injection piston (G).

My favorite fastener for projects is Allen head cap screws so I used #10-24 cap screws instead of 1/4-20 bolts to mount the heater block and guide block to the frame. They’re at least as strong as ungraded 1/4-20 bolts and should conduct a little less heat from the heater block to the frame.

I wanted to make solid plastic parts for some of my amateur science experiments. There are a number of ways to make things out of plastic, each with its advantages and disadvantages. Often just cutting raw material to the desired shape works best. Some plastics can be cast by pouring a liquid resin with hardener into a mold (see “DIY Rotocaster,” Make: Volume 41). Vacuum forming works well for making things out of thin sheets of plastic (see “Kitchen Floor Vacuum Former,” Make: Volume 11). I considered making a 3D printer, but for the few plastic parts I envisioned needing, it wasn’t worth the time and money.

Once the sketch is made, I’m off to the machine shop to cut some metal. Two little blocks of 6061 aluminum make up the halves of the mold. First, two 0.124″ holes are drilled through both blocks to hold guide pins that will ensure the mold halves are properly aligned. Two ⅛” guide pins are pressed into one half of the mold, and the other holes are reamed out just slightly to 0.126″. Then the parts are machined on the lathe to form the cavity for the cap. Finally a sprue hole is drilled and countersunk.

Through an unmatched emphasis on consistently driving a standard of excellence we have created a culture that can deliver the superior quality you demand at today’s pace of rapid innovation. Whether you need a plastic injection mold built to run at your facility or a plastic injection molding supplier to provide quality parts; Elite is confident we will be a great asset to your supply chain.

(One modification I tried didn’t work out so well. The heater block and guide block need to be spaced out from the frame a bit, to isolate the hot heater from the frame and put the parts into proper alignment with the piston. The plans call for washers, but I tried using some leftover fiber ceramic insulation sheet instead. It was too soft — it allowed the heater block and guide block to move out of alignment, preventing the piston from operating smoothly.)

This project should cost between $100 and $200. It depends a lot on where the metal is purchased. I had a lot of the metal already, left over from other projects. Try to find a friendly local iron dealer, rather than getting the metal online or from a hardware store. They’ll often let you pick through their cut-off pile and sell it for almost scrap prices.

I tried out the cap mold with some of the tote lid plastic I used for the test pellets. The caps turned out nice, but they were a bit stiff and difficult to put on. A more flexible plastic was needed. Then I made some caps with LDPE (low-density polyethylene) lids from oatmeal boxes. The caps made with the LDPE work just fine.

Our company strives to remain a strong and determined long-term solutions partner to every valued customer. Most importantly, Elite Mold & Engineering is built from a team that holds each other accountable. We push each other to put in maximum effort and achieve the highest quality with every single component we manufacture in-house, thus continuously ensuring the success of our clients.

Sometimes there’s a tool you want to buy, but you can’t justify the cost. In that case, why not make it? For me, a plastic injection molding machine fell into that category — and it turns out they’re not hard to make.

Jim Hannon retired recently after 39 years as an electrical engineer for Rockwell Collins. Now he can concentrate on amateur science projects and on making things in his woodworking and machine shop — especially things that are too expensive to buy, or that just don’t exist.

In addition to being a veteran-owned plastic injection molding supplier, our company is proud to be a partially minority-owned business. For information on our rich history of commitment to diversity, inclusion, hard work, and quality USA-made products, visit our About Us page.

For now, I’m limited to simple molds I can make with a lathe or mill, but I’m adding CNC capability to my lathe, and thinking about a CNC router. That would open all sorts of possibilities.

We believe in the power of persistence and determination, doing the right thing when no one is looking, and a culture of constant innovation and improvement.

So I built an injection molder based on the plans in Vincent R. Gingery’s book Secrets of Building a Plastic Injection Molding Machine. David Gingery could be considered a forerunner of the Maker Movement — he and his son Vincent have written a whole series of books on building tools for the machine shop.

I used an inexpensive digital temperature controller (H) from Auber Instruments (auberins.com). These controllers use PID (proportional-integral-derivative) feedback control and can bring the temperature up to the exact setting quickly without any overshoot. I mounted mine in a separate enclosure and added a solid-state relay to handle the high-power heaters. A thermocouple sensor (I) comes with the controller; it screws into a tapped hole in the heater block near the nozzle (J). It is really nice to be able to set the desired temperature on the controller, turn on the heaters and watch the temperature rapidly climb to the setting.

I wouldn’t recommend this project for someone who has no metalworking experience. I made full use of my machine shop: mill drill, lathe, stick welder, horizontal band saw, ½” reamer, and various taps. You can get by with a drill press and various hand tools. I welded most of the assembly together but the book calls for screws, except for one weld (which you could have someone else do if you don’t have a welder).

Plastic injection molding has been around since thermoplastics were invented. It’s a great way to make many copies of a part quickly, and what I like best is that it’s easy to reuse old plastic objects to make new ones.

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Jim Hannon retired recently after 39 years as an electrical engineer for Rockwell Collins. Now he can concentrate on amateur science projects and on making things in his woodworking and machine shop — especially things that are too expensive to buy, or that just don’t exist.

The frame (C) in the Gingery design is mostly angle and flat iron held together with bolts and nuts, but two connections needed to be welded. So I decided to weld most of the frame and avoid drilling so many bolt holes.

Now I’m making test-tube caps for my science experiments. I started out by drawing a sketch for the mold in my project notebook. The test tubes are 16mm in diameter so I started with that dimension and chose arbitrary dimensions for the height of the cap and thickness of the plastic. I added a lip to the cap to make it easier to pull off.

Being an engineer, I couldn’t resist making improvements. The plans call for a 1″×1½”×4″ piece of cold rolled steel for the heater block (A), where the plastic is heated before being injected into the mold. I used a leftover piece of 1″×2″ hot rolled steel instead. The wider block allowed me to add a second cartridge heater (B), so my machine warms up quicker and can get hotter.

The major deviation from the plans is the temperature control. In the original design, you have to watch a dial thermometer while fiddling with a bimetal thermostat. Going with something more modern is well worth the effort.

Elite Mold & Engineering, Inc. is proud to be a veteran-owned company backed by more than 40 years of quality American manufacturing services. The values of service, honor, and integrity permeate everything we do – from the products we make to the superior craftsmanship and customer support behind them.

Using the machine is easy. The book recommends making a test mold that will make two ½”-diameter pellets of plastic. These pellets are then used to feed the machine when making real parts.

To try it out I cut some ⅜”-wide strips of polyethylene from an old plastic tote lid, set the controller to 380°F and fed the plastic strips into the cylinder. After the cylinder is filled with sufficient molten plastic, the mold is placed under the nozzle and raised into place. (If the mold in put in place while the plastic is being loaded some of the plastic will dribble out of the nozzle and clog the sprue of the mold.)

Learn more: Secrets of Building a Plastic Injection Molding Machine by Vincent R. Gingery (David J. Gingery Publishing, 1997), ISBN 1-878087-19-3