Free Plastics Design Articles from IDES

IDES has assembled a very nice collection of free plastic design guides and articles that you should consider downloading for your personal library. Just add them to your cart and they’ll send you the link. Here’s a few I found really useful:

Designing With Plastic: The Fundamentals from Ticona is a classic (if there is such a thing in plastic design guides). Last updated in 2006, this single guide presents all the basic information regarding plastic and part design for injection molidng. This is definitely a must-have.

The Design Solutions Guide from BASF is also a very complete review of the subject. Is it better than Ticona’s? Download both and see for yourself… they’re both free…

The Snap-Fit Design Manual from BASF is just that: It reviews all the ways you can snap parts together including the fairly easy-to-use stress calculations for each (to make sure you’re not over-stressing the plastic).

There’s 66 articles in total, but you’re probably not going to be too interested in some of them (like Cold Jet – Industry Overview: Plastic Mold Cleaning or Effective & Economical Purging of Plastics Processing Machinery). But you should check out most of them… again, because they’re free.

In addition, IDES has a really decent collection of free on-line articles covering design, materials, processing and other related subjects. All you have to do is register (for free).

Sample-licious: Protomold

Gotta love those samples – particularly those that can can be used as a 3-dimensional design guide. One of the best collections out there is the collection created by Protomold. The best-known sample is the purple Protomold Sample Cube (above). Carl Alviani mentioned it last year on Core77 as one of his new favorite things. Molded out of polypropylene, this part ships flat and snaps together. Described by one of Carl’s friend as “an ME degree in a box,” the Cube is a single molded piece that folds into cube shape, and features physical examples of over a dozen guidelines of good injection-molded part design including snap fits, pass-core features, live hinges, ribs, knit lines, textured surfaces, and several examples of how to design and not design a boss to minimize sink. The order form for this part can be found here.

The next sample to come out of Protomold was the Resin Puzzle, featuring 9 of the most popular materials offered out of the dozens available in stock. The puzzle come with a guide to the materials and the solution to assembling the puzzle (which is shipped disassembled) is available on their site (but don’t peek). To order, use this link.

Their latest offering is really fun and geeky: The Protomold Demo Mold is a simulated mold used to demonstrate specific mold and part features. This thing comes complete with the two mold halves, ejection system, the part with gate and runner system – even a side action slide. You can order it here. And when you do, check out the little video showing how it’s assembled…

Guys, I know this is so dorky… But this really IS a great teaching tool. I’m not sure how freely Protomold is letting these things go to anyone who asks for one, but I seriously hope that every industrial design instructor that teaches materials and processes out there gets one of these things to show their students. Actually, I’m hoping they get all three of them.

And, just to make the post complete, here a little promo video:

GLS Overmolding Guide

The Flavour Shaker is molded from SABIC Xylex polycarbonate/polyester overmolded with GLS Versollan TPE.

GLS Thermoplastic Elastomers, now a part of PolyOne, provides a useful collection of designer resources from their Technical Resource Center. In addition to the traditional injection molding part design guide, they have an overmolding guide for their thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs), which is available for download here.

On Demand e-Seminars, Literature and Design Guides from SABIC IP

SABIC Innovative Plastics (formerly GE Plastics) has a wealth of information available to designers. While some of it is written towards and engineer, many of these materials are great reference guides for industrial designers. Much of this stuff is based on the old GE Plastics design guides that I used for so many years. They’re really well-written and great to have on hand.