plastic gear Technical Overview

Finding the Right Mold Design Solution

Every gear application has unique requirements, and the right mold design approach makes all the difference. UNITECH-GEAR offers multiple design strategies:

Prototype Molds (Single-Cavity)

Ideal for product development and low-volume production (up to 5,000 parts). Lower initial investment (typically $2,000-$8,000) with 7-15 day turnaround. Perfect for design validation and market testing before committing to production tooling.

Production Molds (Multi-Cavity)

Economical for medium to high-volume production (50,000-1,000,000+ parts). Two, four, or eight cavities produce multiple gears per shot, reducing per-unit cost by 30-60%. Precision-balanced runner systems ensure cavity-to-cavity consistency within 0.02mm.

Family Molds

Produce different but related parts (e.g., a gear set with drive and driven gears) in a single mold. Ensures consistent material properties and dimensions across mating components. Reduces total tooling investment by combining what would otherwise be separate molds.

Insert Molding Solutions

Combine plastic gears with metal inserts (shafts, bushings, contacts) in a single molding operation. Eliminates secondary assembly steps, improves concentricity, and reduces overall system cost. UNITECH-GEAR has specialized expertise in precision insert molding for gear applications.

Material-Specific Design

Different plastics shrink at different rates (POM: ~2.0%, PA66+GF30: ~0.5-0.8%) and in different ways (isotropic vs. anisotropic). Our mold designs incorporate material-specific shrinkage compensation verified through mold flow analysis.