3D Printing, 3D CAD Design and Rapid Prototyping

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What is a Draft Angle or Draft for Plastic Injection Molding Design

A Draft Angle or Draft for Plastic Injection Molding Design is a technical design term for simply adding a draft angle of 1½ to 2 degrees on a product design for a mold that is used in product manufacturing

what is a draft angle
What is the Ideal Draft Angle for Manufacturing with Plastic Injection Molding

The advantages of using a design draft angle for plastic injection molded parts:

Helps to reduce the chance of damage to the part due to friction while part is being released from the mold.
Helps promote less wear and tear and less hands on physical removal of part the from the mold.
Helps to maintain a uniform, smooth, unscratched finish where desired.
Helps maintain the integrity and uniformity of textured or non-smooth designed surfaces.
Helps to eliminate the need for unconventional ejection of the part from the mold.

The above draft angle design advantages in most plastic injection situations will lower production cost.

Positive Draft vs Negative Draft

Positive draft: A positive draft means the angle of the face, with respect to the direction of pull, is more than the reference angle. A positive draft is the amount of taper for molded or cast parts perpendicular to the parting line allowing for a single mold.

Negative draft: A negative draft means the angle of the face, with respect to the direction of the pull, is less than the negative reference angle. The manufacture of a part that incorporates zero or negative angles may require a mold that can be separated into two or more parts in order to release the casting.

Zero Draft Design vs Positive Draft Design vs Negative Draft Design
What is Zero Draft Design vs Positive Draft Design vs Negative Draft Design

Plastic injection molding is a manufacturing process in which solid thermoplastic pellets are melted and injected into a mold. After this hot melt and fill process is completed the newly formed part is cooled back to a solid. During both, the injection and cooling stages, of the manufacturing process there are several design factors that may affect the quality of the final product and the consistent repeatability of the plastic injection manufacturing process.

When it comes to Manufacturing with Drafts and Radius it always best to have your manufacturer check your design to make sure it matches their manufacturing equipment tolerances and perform any design changes that may be required to achieve the highest manufacturing quality and cost advantages. Manufacturing equipment and materials will dictate the best mold design for your product parts.

Draft Angles are also used to make products or parts for stacking within each other. Stacking parts can save space on store shelf pace and warehouse storage and shipping storage containers which helps reduce the storage cost of your product. The handling cost of multiple units at one time is also reduced. Stacking your products within each other helps to reduce your overall product cost.

draft angle for stacking product for shipping and storage and handling savings
Draft Angle for Stacking Product for Shipping, Storage and Handling

A message from the 3D Printing Expert and Product Design Experts president/owner:

I’m here to assist inventors, companies and organizations with all their 3D CAD design draft angle and manufacturing questions and requirements. I will provide you with expert draft angle design service and solutions.
Thanks for taking the time to view this Draft Angle Design website.
I look forward to working with you on your draft design goals, Anthony, President/Owner

Contact Us Now at 3D Printing and Product Draft Angle Design Experts

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What is a Radius or Corner Radii for Product Design

A Corner Radius or Corner Radii is a technical design term for simply rounding out or making smooth any sharp corner on a design. There are two types of radius: internal for inside corners and external for outside corners. Rather than leaving these corners sharp, a radius equal to at least 0.5 times the adjacent wall thickness is usually used.

A Fillet Radius or Fillet Radii is a rounding of an inside corner and are designed into molds to increase their load bearing strength and to improve both the plastic injection molding process and quality of the plastic part. For those reasons a fillet radius should be a standard allowance on every casting design. A “fillet radii” or “fillet radius” are commonly found on the bottom of a compartment or an inside corner and can be used in between bosses, ribs and gussets to connect them to a wall for added strength.

A Round Radius or Round Radii is a rounding of an outside corner of a part design and are designed into molds to increase their load bearing strength and to improve both the plastic injection molding process and quality of the plastic part. Sometimes a “chamfer” can be used to create a radius type design.

Radius Corners
ON LEFT: Without Using Radius / ON RIGHT Using Radius

Why use a design radius?

A radius is usually used for two reasons:

  1. To smooth out sharp corners on a design to make the design safer and more comfortable for handling.
  2. Rounding of sharp corners for plastic injection molding purposes so the outside corners of the part can fully fill and also helps prevent cracking of the inside corners of the part.
Radius Design for Plastic Injection Molds
When sharp corners are used in a mold the outside corners are hard to fill with plastic and then inside corners after injection will want to expand and crack.

Injection molding is a manufacturing process in which solid thermoplastic pellets are melted and injected into a mold. After this hot melt and fill process is completed the newly formed part is cooled back to a solid. During both, the injection and cooling stages, of the manufacturing process there are several design factors that may affect the quality of the final product and the consistent repeatability of the plastic injection manufacturing process.

When it comes to Manufacturing with Radius and Drafts it always best to have your manufacturer check your design to make sure it matches their manufacturing equipment tolerances and perform any design changes that may be required to achieve the highest manufacturing quality and cost advantages. Manufacturing equipment and materials will dictate the best mold design for your product parts.

radius bosses, ribs and gussets
Bosses, Ribs and Gussets Are Pictured Above

Sharp corners at the base of bosses, ribs and gussets should have Radius Design to help offset stress points. The edge where a boss meets a wall should have a radius used to reduce the sharp corner without increasing the wall thickness to much that it creates a sink problem.

radius design for product design molds
When the design is complete notice the rounded radius on all the corners on the outside of this drill cover case.

A message from the 3D Printing Expert and Product Design Experts president/owner:

I’m here to assist inventors, companies and organizations with all their 3D CAD Design Radius and Manufacturing Pricing. I will provide you with expert design radius service and solutions.
Thanks for taking the time to view this 3D CAD Radius Design website.
I look forward to working with you on your radius design goals, Anthony, President/Owner

Contact Us Now at 3D Printing and Product Radius Design File Experts

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STEP Design Files is a 3D CAD design file format for manufacturing production

STEP Design Files or STP Design Files is a 3D CAD design file format used in the manufacturing production process. A STEP design file is a file extension for a 3-D graphic file used by CAD software. STEP stands for STandard for the Exchange of Product model data. STEP files are used to store 3D image data in an ASCII format, following the standards defined in ISO.

STEP File Design
STEP File Design

STEP Design is a 3d design format that is supported by most CAD software and engineering software such as Solidworks.
Also; STEP design files can be read by windows notepad and be read by programmable software such as Matlab. A STEP file is not editable and the design tree of the model is not available.

A STEP file is a neutral file format that allows the transfer of files between different CAD software. STEP is more recent than IGES and seems to be more reliable. 3D models can be produced from these files and used for analysis, modeling, renderings and manufacturing drawings.

STEP File Designs
STEP File Designs

A message from the 3D Printing Expert and Product Design Experts president/owner:

I’m here to assist inventors, companies and organizations with all their 3D CAD STEP File Design and Manufacturing Pricing. I will provide you with expert STEP file design service and solutions.
Thanks for taking the time to view this 3D CAD STEP File Design website.
I look forward to working with you,
Anthony
President/Owner

Contact Us Now at 3D Printing and Product STEP Design File Experts

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Help Manufacturing Your Product or Invention

Is your new product or invention ready for manufacture?

Product Manufacturing in China and USA

Manufacturing Help for Inventors Invention

The below items should be in place before you contact a manufacturer;

1) Invention Concept
2) 3D Modeling CAD Design
3) Working product proof of function – a prototype
4) STEP file or IGS file CAD design drawings for manufacturing

If you have the above product or invention design items completed then we are able to help set you up with one of our manufacturers to obtain production cost pricing. If you need assistance with the above listed items we provide services which will provide you with the needed manufacturing requirements.

Manufacturing in China can reduce your product cost per unit.

Manufacturing in USA for sophisticated products can give you the high tech advantage.

A message from the president and a owner of 3D Printing and Product Design Experts:

I’m here to provide product manufacturing services to inventors, companies and organizations interested in having their product manufactured in China or the USA. I will supply you with expert manufacturing service solutions.

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CAD Design – IGES & STEP Manufacture Product Design

Major benefits of CAD design program includes the following:

Easy Reproduction: you can recreate the CAD drawing with faster turn-around time and make as many copies as you need.
CAD Design – IGES & STEP Manufacture Product Design
3D Modeling: 3D modeling from CAD designs can be used to quickly establish a benchmark prototype design.

Automatic Simulation: The 3D CAD geometry can be utilized to imitate real-time process, which helps give you management of the efficiency of the design before building a prototype.

Higher efficiency: Since opportunity demands and CAD designs are rationally connected, a change in design is unquestioningly shown into the designing instantly.

Access Control: With CAD services it is achievable to limit some customers from obtaining critical project information and designs.

Savings: The hand sketch method may need hundreds of documents, but with CAD each Drawing is customized, saved digitally to save time and money.

What is CAD Design Blog Page

Many manufacturers will request a CAD Design in a STP, STEP or IGS, IGES file design drawings format for designing molds or pricing manufactured parts for your invention idea or product.

IGES or IGS Files (design file format used in the manufacturing process) stands for Initial Graphics Exchange Specification and is a file format which defines a vendor neutral data format that allows the digital exchange of information among Computer-Aided Design (CAD) systems. It can be used by many CAD programs as a standard ASCII text-based format for saving and exporting vector data, and can store wireframe models, surface or solid object representations, circuit diagrams, and other objects. The IGS format has become the default standard file format for transferring 3D model files between the different CAD software packages. Once a user has created a model file in one specific software to send it to another user who does not have that same program without any concern whether or not the recipient will have the ability to open or view the file.

STEP or STP Files (design file format used in the manufacturing process) is a file extension for a 3-D graphic file used by CAD software. STEP stands for STandard for the Exchange of Product model data. STP files are used to store 3D image data in an ASCII format, following the standards defined in ISO 10303-21 : Clear Text Encoding of the Exchange Structure.

A message from Anthony the president/owner:

I’m here to assist and service inventors, companies and organizations with all their CAD and Manufacturing Design Drawings.