Plastic injection molding can be used to make thousands or even millions of items and parts at a time.
This ability to output massive quantities of units has made injection molding useful to many industries, which is why most modern cars’ interior and exterior surfaces are made in this way.
Car manufacturers only take the highest quality molded surfaces. One of the key elements to creating a top-quality molded plastic surface is getting a high-grade surface finish. In this article, we’re going to tell you how we make Class A Surfaces for vehicles.
What Class A Surfaces Are
Class A is the highest quality grading a molded plastic surface can get. Class A surfaces only get this grading if they are sufficiently strong enough, which means they have to be well-designed and made from sturdy plastic. The surface also needs to meet a high cosmetic standard.
The test applied to the surface focuses on the molded part’s appearance for two reasons. Firstly, when a plastic surface has a structural or cosmetic imperfection, it’s usually easy to spot, and secondly, esthetics play a role in the overall rating system. However, standards have gotten more stringent over the last few years, and so new tools are coming out to allow for more objective testing.
How We Make Class A Surfaces
We start the process by designing the parts in CAD and then creating the actual mold. Molds are made from metal because they need to be able to stand high heat levels and still survive the making of thousands of plastic parts.
A hopper at the back of the machine feeds plastic pellets into a screw lined with a heating coil. The screw pushes the plastic toward the mold, and the plastic pellets melt in the process. The pressure fills the mold at the front of the screw with molten plastic.
Once there’s enough molten plastic in the mold, the plastic cools down and assumes the shape of the part. The machine will then open up, the new part will fall out, and the process will repeat. We can then polish, buff, or paint the surface to get it up to Class A standard before it finally gets shipped to the client.
This method can produce hundreds or even thousands of units in a single day. As such, it is an affordable and efficient way of producing Class A automotive parts.
Find Out More About Injection Molding
Most car manufacturers want their automotive surfaces to have a Class A quality rating. Class A surfaces are defined by their appearance as well as their strength and durability.
In the past, it was difficult to mass-produce plastic parts that met this standard. Now with injection molding, we can produce thousands of plastic automotive surfaces at a time. These machines also allow us to produce parts at a consistent and high quality.
Injection molding can produce Class A automotive surfaces, parts for toys, or any other plastic design you can think of. If you need plastic parts for one of your designs, contact us today to get a quote.
