Post Injection Molding Assembly: Reducing Vendors After Parts Are Molded
Plastic injection molded parts are rarely complete when they leave the mold. If the molder only performs injection molding, the parts must be sent to other vendors to complete all assembly steps. This increases the company's risk. For molders that offer post injection molding assembly, customers have a smaller supply chain to manage, parts arrive faster, and quality is more consistent.
Molded Parts Often Need More Work After Production
Molded parts are often the starting point for many products. Additional work may be required to transform the raw component into a ready-to-use, finished product. These additional processes are secondary to molding, but they still affect quality, timing, and the number of vendors involved before the part is complete.
At E-S Plastics, our post-injection molding assembly and other value-added services include:
Hot Stamping: This printing process uses heat and pressure to transfer metallic or pigmented foils onto a plastic surface, creating durable designs that resist fading, peeling, and wear.
Pad Printing: This indirect offset printing process uses a silicone pad to transfer detailed, high-resolution graphics onto plastic surfaces, including curved, small, or irregularly shaped surfaces.
Heat Staking: This insert-molding process applies heat to a metal component, causing the surrounding plastic to soften as the component is pushed into place.
Sonic Welding: This process uses high-frequency waves to bond plastic parts by inducing intermolecular and surface friction, which generates heat that melts the plastic and forms the bond.
Adhesion: Adhesive services, including robotic adhesion, are used to attach materials to molded plastic components, such as gasket placement or other molded parts.
Assembly: This can include creating subassemblies or fully completed parts and may include any of the above services.
Risks Associated with Multiple Vendors
Using multiple vendors for molding, secondary operations, and assembly adds another point of risk, cost, and time. Managing multiple vendors can be complex. A part may leave the injection molder and then move to a decorating vendor for pad printing or hot stamping, a welding vendor for sonic welding, an assembly vendor for hardware or gasket installation, and a packaging provider before shipment. At each stage, the project must be transported from one facility to another, placed on a production schedule, packaged, and shipped to the next facility. If one or more vendors experience shipping delays, the following vendors are forced to adjust their schedules. If it arrives later than projected and cannot be accommodated on the schedule without inconveniencing another customer, it may be delayed further.
In addition to logistics, if a quality issue occurs, it becomes much more difficult to determine its origin. For example, did the parts arrive at the pad printers with surface blemishes, or were they mishandled after arriving? A quality issue may not be discovered until later in the process. At that point, the buyer must determine where the issue originated, which inventory is affected, and who is responsible for corrective action. The resulting finger-pointing adds time, slows corrective actions, complicates rework decisions, and makes it harder to prevent the same issue from happening again. Each handoff adds scheduling work, freight, inspection points, and another place where delays or quality issues can occur.
Benefits of One Vendor for Molding and Assembly
By having a single vendor for molding and post-injection molding assembly, multi-vendor logistics are eliminated, and time previously spent moving components between vendors is saved. A part is scheduled and moves from molding to additional processes with little lag. This optimized fabrication approach enables the finished product to be shipped faster.
Another advantage is better coordination between molding and downstream teams. Scheduling is more cohesive, and the part moves through each stage of production more smoothly. Additionally, if something occurs in one stage of the process that impacts a later stage, the source can be quickly identified and the issue rectified before scrap numbers increase significantly. A single vendor can usually respond faster because the issue does not have to move through several suppliers before someone can confirm what happened and what needs to change.
A single vendor can also apply inspection criteria more consistently across molding and secondary operations. If a molded part is printed, welded, bonded, or assembled at the same facility, the supplier can check fit, appearance, and function as the part progresses through production. This reduces the chance that a problem is passed to the next vendor before it is found.
A Trusted Supplier For Post Injection Molding Assembly
E-S Plastics has the capabilities and experience to take your part beyond the molding stage with post injection molding assembly and value-added services such as hot stamping, pad printing, heat staking, sonic welding, adhesion, and assembly. Our two facilities provide increased capacity, operational flexibility, and the ability to consistently meet production needs. If you are ready to remove the complexity and risk from your injection molding supply chain, contact us for a quote on your project.