When most people think of cars and the construction of cars, metal will most likely be the first thing to come to mind. Steel plays a significant role in the creation of virtually every car on the road today, and with good reason: it offers exceptional strength-to-weight ratio and is incredibly malleable, allowing manufacturers to create reliable, intricate frames. But despite this excellent material, there’s much more to a vehicle than steel.
However, focusing only on the car’s metal frame and what’s under the hood is missing the forest for the trees. What about all the plastic parts you touch? From the moment you reach for the door handle to your interaction with the radio and your eventual exit from the vehicle, you constantly engage with plastic components.
In today’s vehicles, 50% of the entire dry mass of the vehicle may comprise plastics in one form or another. Of the hundreds of plastic components in a car, many are items the driver or passengers interact with directly, which is why these components must be of reliable quality.
Automakers opt to use injection molding for automotive parts, relying on special equipment to fill specially made molds with liquid plastics that harden into the final component. This injection molding for automotive allows them to shape their parts as they see fit, regardless of the shape of the car’s frame.
Why Automakers Choose Automotive Injection Molding
Injection molding is a staple production process for automakers and aftermarket businesses. This process reaches far beyond the initial manufacturing of the car, and with good reason.
So what makes plastic injection molding for automotive the right choice for automakers?
- Scales easily for mass production. Once we design and manufacture a mold, you can expect to produce tens of thousands of items from it without any loss in quality. The molds are ideal for mass production, where the product’s quality is paramount.
- Delivers high-durability parts suitable for long-term use. There is a massive variety of materials you can use with the automotive plastic injection molding process, so you will undoubtedly find the durability you need to suit the heavy-duty expectations of vehicles.
- More cost-effective over extensive product runs. The large up-front investment of an automotive plastic injection mold quickly pays for itself when all you need to fund are materials and production post mold creation. Saving time and money is always relevant.
- Capable of greater complexity than many other plastic manufacturing methods. Modern computer-enabled mold design yields robust options for automakers. As the complexity of cars increases, so do the parts they need. Having access to an automotive injection mold that can accommodate intricate requirements becomes increasingly necessary for every automaker.
Examples of Automotive Plastic Injection Molding
Look inside any car, and it’s not hard to spot the plastic components. But which components precisely come from plastic injection molding for automotive parts? Some of the most common things plastic manufacturers make for the automotive industry include:
- Interior and exterior trim. While the vehicle’s main body may be steel, there are many other parts of the actual trim — the purely aesthetic parts — that use tough plastics instead. There are also plastic applications under the hood, including critical engine subassemblies, and many of them can easily come from automotive injection molders.
- Door handles, dials, and switches. Many things you physically touch inside the car are plastic, including driver information centers and entertainment clusters. These include the buttons for the car’s electronics and the dials on the radio to the switches used to lock the car from the inside and control the windows.
- Light housings and controls. Switches, sliding panels on sun visors for protecting mirrors, and much more all rely on injection molds from an automotive plastic parts manufacturer.
- Instrument panel items. These items include your speedometer, tachometer, and most of the smaller, intricate components behind these panels that allow them to work. While the number of these panels that cars use certainly differs from model to model, there’s no denying that they all, to some extent, use plastic in their instrument panels.
Explore What’s Possible With This Technology
It’s easy to see that there are endless possibilities regarding using thermoplastics and injection molding techniques for molding car parts and beyond. At Reliant Plastics, we have decades of experience and dozens of high-tech car molding machines ready to work on bringing your projects to life.
Ready to Get Started?
To learn more about injection molding for automotive or to request a free quote from our professionals, please get in touch. We’re happy to help you design and manufacture molds for your future projects.
