Material selection in Plastic part design

The decision to use plastic rather than wood, aluminum, or steel will have consequential

results on the shape, manufacture, cost, and end-use of the product. As such, product

designers should consider what properties are truly required in a given application when
developing plastic parts. Selection of an appropriate plastic material is vital in product
development since the properties of the plastic are closely tied not only to the product design but also the mold designs and process optimization. Inappropriate material selection may incur
severe costs and delays late in the product development cycle  related to trying
different materials and product redesigns.

 Following Plot shows you the comparison between yield stress and elastic properties of plastic parts and metal:

 

At first look it seems that plastics can't compete with other plastic except in the cost consideration.

"While plastics have low elastic modulus and yield strength compared to steel, aluminum,
titanium, magnesium, and other alternative materials, their use in structural applications can be
justified due to their low density and high strain to failure. "

Design of plastic parts-Mold design

Design of Plastic Part_Mold Design

Plastics provide many amazing advantages and property characterstics when used in Product design. From cost consideration, plastics offer not only a low cost per unit volume of material, but also low manufacturing cost, you thought that inspite of such amazing property used it is not yet as popularize as it should, that is because the some of mechanical properties limitation of the plastic parts, but researchers continously working to improve its mechanical and heat resistance property so that it replaces the metal parts in many application.

Some advantages that plastic part offer over metal or any other engineering material are as follow:

• Light weight.
• easy of recyclability.
• wide range of color avalability.
• good asthetic properties.
• good chemical and wear property.

After we take a decision of designing the plastic part, the product development team follows the  structured methodology shown in the following snapshot.