Making Good: Stages In Processing And Manufacturing

The old adage 'it's what's inside that counts' applies just as much to cars and other vehicles as it does to human beings, and whether you make stock interior pieces for a major vehicle manufacturer or custom aftermarket interiors for modding enthusiasts, you want to ensure that the plastic portions of your interior trim pieces are made as well as they possibly can be. However, there are a number of ways to craft plastic interior trim for vehicles, and no two are quite alike.

Injection moulding is one of the most popular and widely used methods for moulding and creating plastic objects, and it's easy to see why; this unique plastic moulding process, which involves injecting liquid plastics at high pressures into pre-set or custom moulds, has a number of advantages over alternative moulding methods that make it ideal for creating pieces of vehicle interior trim. 

What are the advantages of using injection moulding to create interior trim for vehicles?

Precise

Because injection moulding involves injecting the liquid plastic into a mould at extremely high pressures, the plastic 'hugs' the contours of your chosen mould very closely. This ensures that the trim pieces you create precisely adhere to the design of your mould, first time and every time.

This is just as important for mass-produced trim pieces and customised one-off pieces. Mass producers can be assured that every piece they create is identical, while custom manufacturers can craft extremely finely detailed pieces of trim for premium interiors without encountering air bubbles and other imperfections.

Versatile

Injection moulding can be used with virtually any plastic suitable for use as interior trim, from tough, inexpensive thermoplastics to the textured, high-end vulcanisates commonly used in the interiors of high-end vehicles; in many cases, different plastics can even be used simultaneously in the same mould. This gives you unrivalled levels of choice when it comes to picking out specific plastics for your trim pieces.

Rapid turnover 

Modern injection moulding processes are highly automated, with the bulk of the work controlled by highly sophisticated computers. As well as accounting for human error, this computerisation also means that injection moulding services can create pieces extremely rapidly, even if you require multiple different pieces requiring different moulds. If you need bulk orders of identical trim, hundreds of pieces can be turned out in a matter of hours once the mould design has been chosen and finalised. 

Economic

The combination of rapid turnover and low labour requirements means that modern injection moulding services tend to be relatively inexpensive and represent particularly good value for money if you require bulk orders.