Industrial giants mass produce most of our consumer products using injection molding. Enormous machines with hydraulic rams inject molten plastic into metal molds, forging toothbrushes, boat hulls, what have you. It's a 24/7 operation performed on a global scale.
But injection molding isn't just for the titans. Not anymore. The Inventor Benchtop Injection Molder from Galomb brings injection molding for prototyping and production to the backyard shop or start-up business.
Most smaller product-design firms create prototypes using silicone molds and a chemical process to make urethane parts. It's a nifty, thrifty and generally quicker way to make highquality parts in a wide range of colors and any degree of firmness, or what we engineers call durometer.
Injection molding, however, relies on heating and melting a single material and injecting it into a mold under pressure. Unfortunately, silicone molds can't handle the pressure required for injection molding.
We used Galomb's Benchtop Injection Molder to build a medical prototype that we designed for our client, Dr. Amy Isenberg. Her product, the "Isen-Airway" is used to keep the airway of a patient open while a breathing tube is inserted. We were unable to create prototype parts using the traditional silicone mold/cast urethane process because the end-part needed to be made from a specific FDA-approved plastic for end-use testing. That plastic couldn't be tainted with other breeds of plastic, so we had to use an injection-mold technique.
In our test of Galomb's machine we cast epoxy around a pattern to create our tool. Ideally, we would machine our tool from aluminum stock, but using cast epoxy can provide an acceptable result and is more practical for those interested in working in a home shop.
The machine melts plastic pellets. A handle-operated ram pressurizes the molten plastic and injects it into the mold. A few minutes later, you open the mold and viola, you have an injectionmolded part.
The simple, stout machine is well constructed and includes ways to permanently mount the assembly to a bench. The only control other than the power button is a temperature dial on the side of the unit. A magnetically attached thermometer can be quickly removed to insert a temperature probe into the machine and take a more accurate reading of the melted media. Simple fasteners allow components to be removed easily for cleaning or service, and a non-stick coating on the ram makes clean-up and operation a snap.
We create parts for most of our projects using the quicker silicone mold/urethane process. But this benchtop injection molding machine was a perfect fit for Dr. Isenberg's product. We were able to use chemically safe, FDA-approved polypropylene plastic and we were able to make an indefinite number of samples quickly and easily once the initial mold was created.
