What you need to know about developing custom silicone products

We have received many inquiries recently, most of them come from individuals who are just involved in this industry, and they generally don’t know much about the steps that must be taken to develop a silicone product, and they don’t even know that molds need to be made first to produce silicone products. Here, we write this article to describe the steps to develop a silicone product, the tools needed and how we do it, hope it will be helpful to the startups.

Branding

If the product you are going to develop belongs to consumer goods, based on years of experience, we suggest you to apply for a trademark and then print or engrave the trademark on the product, which will have a positive impact not only on the brand dissemination but also on the long-term development of the company. Since you have decided to commit to this business, you need to think long term, don’t you think so?

Product Drawing

Whether we are making a prototype or processing a mold, we need 3D drawings of the product, usually in a format such as STEP or IGS. Without drawings, it is difficult to assess the cost of the mold and the product. If you don’t have the right designers around you, it’s good to find a Freelancer through some online platforms, and they usually don’t charge much, in addition, our team can also assist customers to create 3D drawings.

Project Evaluation

Our team will analyze the manufacturability of the design according to the usage scenario and structure of the product, in addition to whether the color, raw material and size required by the customer can be achieved, we will also give confirmation one by one. At the same time, we will determine the number of cavities to be processed according to the order quantity information provided by the customer, in order to provide the customer with the most cost-effective solution. In addition, based on our experience, we will also recommend whether to directly process the mass production molds or to make sample molds first, or to make prototypes through 3D printing to verify the structure, so as to save costs and speed up the process as much as possible for our customers.

Prototypes

This step is critical. Making samples to verify the structure before mass production avoids the risk of loss due to design flaws. Currently, there are two main ways to make samples, one is 3D printing, which is more cost-effective, does not require tooling, and has a faster delivery time, but it may not be suitable for products with very high dimensional requirements and complex structures. The other way is to make sample molds, which is the traditional way with higher cost and longer lead time. If the product has high dimensional requirements and needs to be assembled with other accessories, this method is more suitable. The sample mold is made of steel through CNC machining, and the process is exactly the same as making mass production molds, except that the sample mold is a small mold.

In addition, not all projects have to make samples to confirm before making mass production molds, for example, the production of similar products on the market or the structure of the product is very simple and the size requirements are not high, you can directly make mass production molds.

Mass Production Mold

Silicone products are made through the mold in the machine at high temperature and high pressure, silicone product molds are mainly made of steel through CNC processing, the processing time takes 15-30 days ranging, mold fee is one of the biggest cost to develop a silicone product, many new customers do not understand why the mold cost is high, you can imagine, to carve the shape of the product out of the steel, the process is requires CNC processing technology and labor cost.

After the mold processing is completed, we will arrange to test the mold, if there is no abnormality, we will make samples according to the customer’s requirements of color, hardness, size, and then send them to the customer for approval.

MOQ and Production

After the customer confirms the sample, we can arrange the mass production according to the customer’s order, sounds very simple, right?

Here I want to focus on the MOQ, the first thing I want to say is mixing material, the color of silicone raw material is similar to translucent, we need to add color pigment to the raw material in order to achieve the customer’s desired color, note that, each color has a different formula, so each color we need to mix the material separately. Our equipment can mix 20-40kg each time and the whole process takes at least 40-60 minutes. It should be emphasized here that even if your order only needs 5kg of material per color, we need to spend about 30 minutes to prepare the material, which is one of the factors that make small orders more costly.

In addition, each time the mold is loading and unloading the machine, it takes time, usually 1.5 – 2.0 hours. Before the mold is put on the machine, we need to clean the surface and install it on the machine, after that, we can’t start the production until the temperature of the mold is up to the set value, the temperature usually ranges from 150-180 degrees, depending on the product structure, and this warming up process usually takes about 60 minutes. It also takes time to unload the mold from the machine after the order is completed. Can you imagine how we can spread these consumed labor and time costs if the order quantity is too small? This is one of the factors why there is a MOQ requirement and also a higher unit price for smaller orders.

Inspection

After each mold is loaded on the machine, our quality inspector will do the first article confirmation to make sure that the color, size, hardness, etc. meet the customer’s requirements before starting mass production. In addition, we will do 100% inspection on the finished products to make sure that customers receive good products.

Packaging

The default packaging is usually plastic bags for the products, such as 50, 100, 200 and so on integer per bag, and then into cartons. Meanwhile, we can provide the package according to customer’s design.

Shipping

We maintain good relationships with a number of reputable local freight forwarders, no matter the destination is North America, Europe or Southeast Asia, we can arrange air or sea transportation to deliver the goods to the designated location.

CONTACT OUR SALES REP.

ABOUT JERRY ZHANG

Jerry is a professional sales with more than 10 years of experience in the silicone products business. He is able to provide products design checking, mold and molding product cost quotation and full technical engineering support.

Don’t hesitate to contact him for any technical needs and services, or alternativel, give him the opportunity to quote for your manufactured products without obligation.