Plastic Part Design Optimization
Enhance Your Components with Agape Plastics’ Design Optimization Services
Agape Plastics is an industry-leading custom injection molding manufacturing company that’s been in operation since 1973. We provide injection molded components to OEMs and automotive Tier 1 supplier programs among the many other industries we serve from our Grand Rapids, Michigan, facility.
Our high-quality custom injection molded components take a team effort to create and deliver to our customers, and the teamwork begins with our plastic part design optimization services.
Led by our experienced and knowledgeable engineering team, our design optimization services begin with design for manufacturability reviews and ensure your part’s design has minimal oversight heading into production.
Contact us today for more information regarding our plastic part design optimization services.
Identifying Challenges Before Tooling Takes Place
Plastic part design optimization services with Agape Plastics are an incorporated, engineering-centric approach with the end goal of ensuring a reliable and manufacturable component for high-volume program runs where repeatability is easily achieved.
The process begins at component conception. We want to hear from our customers who have created the initial design and are looking for ways to enhance it and find ways to make designs more in-tune with the component’s end goal in the field of service. It’s a collaborative effort and we want to work with your engineering team to find a solution that’s going to work. With conceptual reviews, together we’re able to identify challenges before any tooling conversations have taken place – saving customers costs, shortening lead times, and providing program clarity.
Design For Manufacturability
While Agape Plastics is not design responsible, when customers utilize our plastic part design optimization services, we incorporate the best design for manufacturability procedures we have available.
This includes thorough review of your design with feasibility analysis to review how manufacturable your initial drawings or CAD files represent the component. During this feasibility analysis, we review remarks where defects such as warpage, sink, and fill voids may occur. The design feasibility analysis is aimed at improving manufacturability while simultaneously creating cost-effective projects by highlighting and eliminating potential defects through advanced software. If we discover during the analysis that the original design isn’t feasible, we can transition into our design optimization services where we offer our suggestions with detailed notes on specific areas that are pain points of the original design.
Concerned about costs? Agape Plastics has a solution for that as well. Our Value-Analysis Value-Engineering (VAVE) operations aim to provide customers with value analysis of existing products and find ways to reduce costs whether it’s through material selection, design considerations, tooling, or more. The VE operations entail that during product development, we focus on reducing costs or improving function (or both) by way of product evaluation and analysis. This takes place before any capital is invested in tooling, raw materials, or equipment.
Metal to Plastic Conversion
Metallic components certainly have their place in manufacturing spaces and throughout numerous industries, but there is a fast-growing movement in metal to plastic conversation operations. By converting a metallic component into a thermoplastic-centric product, teams experience components that are lighter in weight, improved performance, manufacturing efficiency, better lifecycle performance, more easily manufacturable, and certainly a cost-reduction.
Design for Long Term Production Success
Agape’s history in supporting automotive OEMs and Tier 1 supplier programs has afforded us the knowledge and expertise in not just immediate plastic part design optimization services, but long-term production success and long-term solutions.
Tooling is the lifeline of a successful injection molding program and it’s not enough to just think about the design of a component, but how the part will perform in production over time. Simplifying tooling solutions is part of the long-term production success plan for all our customers who trust us with their design optimization services. The more complex the tooling operation is, the more upfront costs faced by a customer. Not only costs but lead times become extended as the more time spent on tooling and navigating a complex operation, the longer until the injection molding machines begin running.
Agape Plastics does not manufacture the tooling as we rely on a trusted outside vendor who holds the same quality control, communication, and timeliness standards that we do. While we don’t manufacture tooling, we do have an in-house tool repair room where regular tooling maintenance and repairs can occur without leaving our facility.
Different software is readily available in our facility to help with long-term success. We have MoldFlow to predict how melted material will flow throughout the cavity or cavities ensure more long-term success and improved repeatability throughout the lifeline of your program. Understanding the impacts of flow analysis leads to better part geometry and a more uniform shot into the cavity or cavities.
Supporting consistency, scalability, and production stability matter most. Our plastic part design optimization services aim to reinforce these priorities for OEMs and Tier 1 supplier programs.
Partner With Agape Plastics for Plastic Part Design Optimization Services
Agape Plastics is an industry-leading custom injection molding manufacturing located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and has been in business since 1973. We create custom injection molded components for OEMs and Tier 1 supplier programs in the automotive industry and several others, all with the same focus and streamlined approach.
Our team understands the excitement ahead of a new project and wants the part in your hands as soon as possible. With expert-led plastic part design optimization services, the waiting time can shrink as our engineers work alongside you to ensure manufacturability.
Have a design ready for review?
Contact our team today and let’s take your project from concept to completion.