Information for First Time Inventors

It must be said that we do not work with a lot of inventors. Injection molding is an expensive process and well out of the budget of most individuals. Inventors typically are not familiar with our industry and can require a good bit of education. This FAQ should is intended to get inventors up to speed with the injection molding process.

The Number 1 Question....

How much does it cost?

To make something from plastic you must have a mold (or often called a tool). Tooling for injection molding can be very expensive. Even the simplest of prototype tooling will cost $2,000-$8,000. A tooling estimate cannot be made without a good idea of what the part will look like, but this simple example of cost structure may be useful:
Simple 2 piece house 4"x6"x2" deep with few internal details

Prototyping: $3,500 to $5,500 4-5 weeks
Low volume production tool: $8,000 to $12,500 8-10 weeks
Mid volume production tool: $15,000 to $25,000 8-12 weeks

What we need to quote

Detailed drawings either 2D or 3D CAD drawings.

The parts should be designed for the process you wish to make them with. The more detail you give us the better the quote will be. You will most likely need a professional to do the design except for the simplest of parts. We do not as a rule design customer's parts without getting paid.

What will the piece be made of?

What type of plastic do you want? We may have decent advice for you, but we often do not have the time to fully determine the exact plastic. Again, pay a professional engineer to get the very best advice possible or contact material suppliers.

Related to this question is what color do you want? For small orders plastic is purchased in a natural or black color. Depending on the plastic the natural color can be clear to manila to...well almost anything. Changing colors in a plastic molding machine is expensive. It is best to keep your color requests simple. There are many off-the-shelf colors we can purchase, but if you insist on a custom color there are minimum orders that can add dramatic cost increases. Black is usually the cheapest followed by natural. Clear can be quite expensive and colors can be very expensive for small runs.

How many pieces do you want to make?

This determines what kind of tooling we need to quote. A tool that makes 10,000 parts is very different from one that makes 1,000,000. (Please see our FAQ on tooling for more information.)

As discussed tooling to start a project is very expensive. Normally when launching a product companies build a prototype to see how things work out. Depending on the requirements it may be fabricated or actual tooling may be built. Very few companies start with high volume production tooling at the very beginning. Usually they build bridge or prototype tooling. This is tool that may last for 50,000 parts or so until they can determine how their product is received. It may be made of lower quality materials, or have fewer mold cavities. Because of these factors the part price may be higher than the customer really wants and may even lose money while using this tooling, but they may have saved thousands of dollars in tooling investment. If the product takes off then high volume production tooling can be built while the bridge tool continues production. As you can see from this discussion plastics are geared to very high volumes. Seldom to orders smaller than 5,000 to 10,000 pieces make economic sense.

There are two question you need to determine how many parts to request. First how many you will place a purchase order for at time. When you consider this also consider your credit rating. Do you have enough resources to place an order for ten million parts?

The second part of "how many" is how much tooling to build. If you really need a million a month that's a whole different tool than one that makes ten thousand a month. The most likely case is that you need a bridge or prototype tool to begin production. If it turns out that at some point you need more tooling then that is the time to build it.

Some final thoughts:

Plastic molding is designed for high volume production. Prototyping via injection molding often cannot be justified for start up projects. You may need to find alternative means of prototyping.

You invented this gadget because it's useful or can help save money or lives or just because it was fun to do. Now that you have invented it, make a model. Carve it out of wood or plastic. See how it works. Show it to your friends. Ask them if they like it. Then ask them if they would give you ten grand to get started. See what they say then.

You've got a model and it works, now figure out how you are going to sell it and how much you can sell it for (see www.willitsell.com or www.frompatenttoprofit.com). Go to your local college or business development agency or local Technology Transfer office: http://www.state.fl.us/stac/, http://www.usrttc.org/index.html, http://www.t2s.org/abou.html. There are plenty of folks out there who will help you for free. Seek them out.

Come up with a marketing plan and a business plan. Does it make sense to spend thousands of dollars on this idea?

Do your own research. Don't call a Fortune 500 company and expect someone to spend twenty minutes on the phone answering your questions. Newsgroups (try alt.inventors or alt.inventorworld )on the web can be a great resources.

This part of the project may not be very much fun. For most inventors the fun is in the inventing, not the business end. But for most projects the business end is where all the work is and all the payoff. There are a million ideas out there to make life better. Only a select few make it to shelves at Wal-Mart.