Injection Molding – General Processing Ranges
Check out our handy reference guide that shows typical injection molding processing conditions for a wide range of thermoplastic materials. This guide provides drying conditions, recommended moisture content, melt and mold temperatures ranges, and shrinkage ranges for many of the most widely used polymers.
The various polymer families have many different grades that can have different molding conditions, so supplier-specific and grade-specific information should be used whenever possible when designing molds or setting up molding parameters.
The drying conditions and melt and mold temperature ranges provided should only be used as a general guide. Because the specific molding conditions can vary with different grades of a specific material as well as from supplier-to-supplier, it is strongly suggested to refer to the suppliers data / processing sheets for information specific on a given grade of material.
The mold shrinkage ranges provided are general ranges and are only intended to be used to allow comparisons to other materials and should only be used as a general guide. The mold shrinkage ranges provided are for the “flow-direction” and are based on 1/8” thick injection molded test specimens per ASTM D955 or 4 mm thick test specimens per ISO 294. Actual mold shrinkage is influenced by a number of factors including part design, wall thickness, tool configuration, mold cooling layout, gate type, location and size, and processing parameters. Entec Polymer’s recommendation would be to perform a mold filling analysis to better predict the part shrinkage or to produce a prototype mold to measure the actual part shrinkage.