Looking at the design drawing of a special plastic part, you realize that traditional molds simply can’t deliver within four weeks when you need to test the performance of a new material through injection molding. When your project requires evaluating the actual performance of a novel plastic material and obtaining injection-molded parts identical to those in final mass production, time becomes the greatest adversary. Traditional mold manufacturing typically takes 8–12 weeks, a timeline that is often too long for many R&D and market validation projects, potentially causing missed opportunities.
Our rapid prototype mold is a solution specifically designed for low-volume production and prototype validation. By optimizing manufacturing processes and structures while ensuring core functionality, it can shorten the standard mold manufacturing cycle by over 60%.
For new material testing, the advantages of rapid prototype molds are particularly significant: they enable the production of parts using the exact same injection molding process as mass production, providing the most authentic material performance data, including key parameters such as flowability, shrinkage rate, and strength. This offers real-world value that CNC machining or 3D printing cannot match.
Rapid prototype molds focus on achieving the basic functionality and appearance of the product, avoiding complex structures like sliders or lifters found in production molds (unless absolutely necessary). This streamlined design approach significantly reduces machining and assembly time while ensuring that the injection-molded parts meet core performance testing requirements.
A four-week turnaround from drawing to finished injection molded part in hand is no longer an impossible challenge. With rapid prototype mold technology, you can obtain special material test parts that are fully consistent with mass production processes, at the lowest cost and fastest speed.