Low Volume Plastic Part Production - Plunkett Associates

Plunkett Associates offer a professional, impartial service designed to supply the ultimate solution for prototype parts, low volume quantities or full production requirements. We provide design expertise alongside material, tooling and production advice, adding significant value to your project.

Material Capabilities: Plastic, Metal, Clear, Flexible

Process Capabilities: Injection moulding, Compression Moulding, Vacuum casting, CNC Machining, Extrusion, Die Casting,
Additive Manufacture - Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Stereolithography (SLA), 3D Printing,

Prototyping - Offering all additive manufacture processes plus full machining options for functional plastic and metal prototypes, we provide the most appropriate process to meet your requirements.

Low Volume Production - We are specialists in low volume quantities, offering exceptional process options, globally sourcing suppliers to provide flexibility of service.

We manufacture compression and injection mould tooling, designed to match your quantities and timescales. Manufacturing in UK and in China, in high specification aluminium alloys and a range of steels, we configure the tooling to your requirements.

Hence whether you need 10 parts in an engineering polymer or a batch of 100,000, we can supply tooling and parts for your application.

Whilst injection moulding is the end product, the tooling is the first thing to resolve.

We have the expertise and capacity to run a variety of tools from hand loaded development tools to fully automatic production tooling, all in a wide variety of materials.

We will also run existing tooling if you are planning to re-shore, subject to understanding the product requirements and the nature of the tooling.

Development Tooling:
There are times when product development can only take place on components produced in production intent materials. Manufacturing tooling at this early stage in a development programme is high risk as the design is immature and changes are likely to be required.

We have the experience and expertise to create development tooling quickly and factor in potential changes so that they can be realised with the minimum of delay. This facilitates either the creation of several options or the iterative tuning of a part to achieve your design goal.

Rapid/Prototype Tooling:
This class of tooling is driven by the need for speed! We are used to plastic prototypes in circa five days from Stereolithography and Laser Sintering; therefore this class of tooling is all about getting injection moulded prototypes, in production materials, fast!

This is achieved through standardisation where possible and the use of lose inserts if applicable to resolve undercut features. We regularly use prototype tooling to produce injection moulded parts in quantities ranging from sub one hundred to low thousands.
Bridge tooling - This came about initially to ‘bridge’ the gap between prototype and production, however today we commonly use this as a low volume production tool with great success.

Addressing the need for a cosmetic finish, injection moulded materials and a short leadtime, bridge tooling can be invoked due to the leadtime associated with the production tooling, programme slippage, market research, or often as a low volume production tool.

Manufactured from a large range of aluminiums and steels, tool life can run into tens of thousands of parts, effectively deliver many of the advantages of production tooling without the long leadtime!

Production tooling:
Production Tooling is manufactured in a range of tool steels to suit the tool life requirement, and sourced from the UK and the Far East depending on time, logistics and client preference.

Tooling can be manufactured and then moulded in a wide range of engineering materials including ABS, PC, ABS/PC, PA, PAGF, Ultem, and PVC to name a few.

Production call off can be scheduled and shipped as required worldwide. Alternatively Plunkett Associates can arrange for these tools to be shipped after trialling, for the client to mould in house or at their nominated supplier.

To discuss your particular project, give us a call or upload details of your requirements here.

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