Injection Molding a Spoon - Designing, making, using
Вставка
- Опубліковано 6 лют 2025
- I was commissioned to make an injection mold for a spoon by Manning Innovations for one of their customers. At the end of the video, you'll see one of Manning's machines in operation. I show how I modified a spoon CAD file supplied by the customer, designed the injection mold, made the injection mold, and then molding some test spoons.
Support me on Patreon: / johnsl
Injection molding machines shown in the video: www.manninginn...
Micro Mesh Polishing Swabs: micro-surface....
As a guy who has designed a spoon before... God, it is way more difficult that it looks like. This is an amazing job.
Designing the spoon itself would be the hardest thing for me. I'm good with geometric designs, but not free-form designs. I tried using the mesh and surfacing tools to replicate the spoon, but gave up after realizing I had way to much of a learning curve.
Yes late friend teacher was one who did the dies for yo yo ..frisbe...and those condiment containers for mustard and ketchup resturant used to have...always Remember we would be out getting food and first few minutes he would always pick items up and slowly look at and point out mistakes he had made or others had made copying design
Easier to just carve one out of wood, lol
I was thinking the same thing when I start watching it...there isn't a flat or geometric surface on the entire dang thing...Once you start dabbling in manufacturing, you never look at everyday items the same...I will be carrying on a conversation with someone and I will look at the item in their hand and be thinking "How the hell did they draw that"...
I am not a dedicated 3d artist by any means, but that's just a plane. It's not that hard to make a rough mesh of a spoon moving individual vertices around and then subdivide it for smoothness and then extrude.
wow! I don't find a lot of videos that go from design, programming, machining and injecting! You're the boss man. You really know what you're doing. Salute to you!
I’m just so happy that someone else is passionate about designing moulds for spoons 😊🙏🏼
I've wanted to tackle a project like this for 20 years. Conceptually I know how to do it, but I've never seen the process covered from beginning to end in a way I would be able to replicate in my shop. Thanks John!
"I did it this way because I tried other things but this way worked for me."
Words to live by
Nice to see the process our everyday items are made.
Also glad to see local people making parts for production not just some ACME faceless Corp.
Nice work John.
Everyday items are not produced like this, this is more of hobby fun. This is nothing like the process in an actual manufacturing facility. The work shown in this video is far too manual with machines far too small.
@@katdat1399 they are made in similar ways but on a larger scale.
Cool to see the entire process. We are still working on our first mold, so its good to see other examples.
Let me know if I can help or you want to collaborate (this is a hobby for me, so fun is the most important criteria for projects).
@@JohnSL Thanks John! We have the machine up and running but we needed a LOT more air. We are in the middle of a 2-stage upgrade, so once that's complete, we will be back on the mold design/prototype. Between you and Dragonfly, I've got a TON of information on how to be successful. We are going to start simple and work our way to more complex operations.
@@JohnSL Can you show more about placing gates and injection mold sprue? How material flow? How to realese air safetly?
In the injection molding industry, you can design, manufacture, and use it. You are doing great job. We are also mainly molding in the food industry in China. The process of spoon is very strict. Praise for you
Impressive the level of detail, what amazes me is how they made molds before CNC machines
Tool making and machining have existed long before cnc. cnc just removes some human error :)
@@benronan2026 True but CNC seems to have opened up curves that would have been near impossible to do manually. While you can mill an arc incrementally, I doubt its ever as good as CNC obtains
Great video. What wasn't covered however is injection molding simulation. That's usually where optimal clamping pressure, packing time, cooling time and all other useful information come from.
I would have thought it would've been a giant mode with many spoons in it all injected molded at the same time.
Fascinating process.
For production, absolutely. This mold would not be cost effective for making a commercial product. But it achieved their goals (I'm not allowed to say what there goals are).
@@JohnSL The goal is to eat soup
I was thinking, what exactly would someone be using this for? My conclusion is use in an SHTF/Prepper scenario for on site fabrication of low quantities of common items in, for example, a bunker. Cool video@@JohnSL
@@tequilasalad1535 Why? One could assume the reason one is "prepping" for a disaster is where there is no electriicity... which the Proto-Jet needs to operate. Secondly the cost... the Proto-Jet's start at $9000, so not counting the cost of the mold, you could buy from Uline 1000 spoons for $38 which means with $9000 you could buy 236,842 spoons. The logical thing to do is just spend $38 and store 1000 spoons in your bunker.
No.. the only reason I can see a use for this mold is proto typing a spoon in a limited run that can be used for testing and packaging design - where's it's way cheaper than having molds made for a production machine - which can be very expensive.
@@douglascaskey7302 why assume that post disaster there would be no electricity? You could use a mold in an SHTF situation to produce things out of raw material you originally didn’t possess or refine
This is one of the best videos i've ever seen. It's just a marvelous engineering yet a simple product in our daily life. Truly, an amazing work!. I'm never gonna throw a spoon in a bin just like that again!
Cool John, I am a mechanical design engineer myself, the internet in general lacks this kind of content, waiting for more. great work.
The sheer humbleness of this incredibly skilled gentleman made me comment, thumbs up and subscribe to him. Wish you all the best
I'm a plastic injection mold maker, and you did a really great job. Our tools usually have a whole ejection system, and we generally have to "spot" the tool by hand using all types of die grinders. There's generally 10 thou of stock left on the tool, which must be removed by hand, so as to ensure a PERFECT seal off, it is also much faster than machining it to size. Very cool.
@@heatround102 It's really hard for me to say in this particular case... This could be prototyping, which happens a lot in my trade.
Customer wants to get an idea of an end product. We have a TON of prototype molds at our shop, which are just sitting around collecting dust.
To me, this looks like a prototype. I don't think this would run production, it just seems way too time consuming. Unless of course, they just don't need that many spoons? I can only speculate on the needs of the customer.
They could be trying out a new material, seeing what full scale production might look like cost wise, might be showing another customer an idea of what the product may look like.
It is indeed cheap to buy plastic spoons online, but there is also economy of scale... 2 cents could be adding up to A LOT, and it may very well be the case that running production on your own utensils is only fractions of a penny.
Ordering from other places isn't just the base cost of the spoon, you're paying mark up, shipping, and potentially other fees/man hours. If you can make your own spoon, for example, you have cut out a lot fluff.
This could also be a competitor trying to squeeze into the plastic spoon market? You never know. Could also be a restaurant or fast food chain wanting to get an economy of scale.
There is a reason so many companies opt for owning their own plastic injection molds. These tools pay for themselves.
@@heatround102 At one company I worked for, we had a machine that could hold a mold that would fit about 8 of those spoon molds in size (the whole blocks, not the spoon itself, so you could fit a lot more spoons by layering them up and down instead of a single one at an angle.
The machine itself held the mold and didn't need to be removed by hand to take out the parts. Instead was automated to close the mold, inject the plastic, then drop the parts and repeat for as much as you told it to (or however much pellets of plastic you could load into it).
Now this was a smaller machine and it was the only one in the shop, as they only used the machine for specific things (not spoons, but parts for things like cars and other machines). But this allowed for relatively small molds to be used in production. While I've not worked with larger machines myself, I have seen them and you can get some sizable molds in those things.
By small injection mold machine, I mean the one was about 2/3rds the height of a VF-2 HAAS CNC machine, about as deep and twice as wide. So maybe not so small... but is considering that that was the largest size mold it could handle and it was fully automated. As a CNC machinist, I tended to make the molds, not run this machine. Though it was simple enough, just filling it with pellets, entering in how many times you needed it run and then placing a button pusher in front of the machine to keep an eye on it while collecting the parts and deburring them as the machine dropped the finished parts out the bottom into a bucket.
@@jackorlove4055yes, normally this is for prototyping, the actual mold would be a lot bigger and heavier to be able to produce on a large scale on an automated injection molding machine, I work in injection molding and some molds are as big as a teenager and weighing 3 tons only on one half of the mold
Do you know someone making molds but bigger molds for 110 ton injection molding machine
Please recommend one
Thanks
@@ilyashoshana3950 I dunno depends on your region. I'm in Canada and Where I live all the shops cut huge molds for automotive purposes. Our work from beginning to completion can cost anywhere from 100s of thousands to a million.
I am a plastic injection toolmaker Tool & Die by trade you got a lot right here but you're not focusing and a lot of the very important things precision and measurement to be cIear. I commend your efforts. My only gripes are an effort to inform the new class. You are obviously well educated i meant the layman watching. You are a blessing sir.
What an insightful journey from design to finished product! Your meticulous approach to injection molding really shines through in this video. It's fascinating to see the entire process unfold, from conceptualization to the practical application of the spoon. Your attention to detail and explanation of each step make it incredibly engaging and educational. Can't wait to see more projects like this!
Good job and good explanation. Of course, making a big mold for the industry is more complicated. But this is for a small operation with this injection molding device.
Great video, enough detail without getting too long. I am surprised that the customer wanted to make their own basic spoon, and not just buy mass produced one’s.
I LOVE seeing how plastic goods are made. There's a beauty in creating something useful but aesthetically pleasing.
Its pretty remarkable that this is something doable in your home these days. Future t3ch of injection mold slash 3d print tech is probably another 20 years away for self serve home use but this is amazing.
Well done with explanation and presenting your skill and joy in producing this video.
Thank you for sharing the entire process in great detail, sir!
Very nice and always appreciate videos like this. I bought my first injection molder from Manning Innovations, Rich is a nice guy to speak with.
Fascinating process. Having no experience in injection moulding myself but quite a lot of experience with various manufacturing, the two things that surprise me are the mould can be made of soft 6061 aluminium (which I guess works because the plastic being used has no abrasives in it), and that the mould does not have to be temperature controlled (heated/cooled) to control the cooling rate of the plastic as it sets.
From raw material to perfection!
As a beginner engineer who wants to get into injection molding some time later, this was quite helpful. Thanks for the video
Thank you John for the great video!
I'm working with hot presses for forming wood products, a lot of different requirements from this but it is still really helpful to see all the steps through and through to get a sense of how another person makes their own tooling.
Thank you for the video and walking through all the major steps. I’m a modelmaker (in training) and I’ve always been interested in mold making.
Just wanted to thank you for all the incredible knowledge you share so freely, I really appreciate you, John!
this is so a prepper will never be without plasticware
Ive had a product that ive been 3d printing for a while (not my design) that ive wondered or had problems making a mold from for a while, this just sparked that idea again as a workflow, thank you for that
Thank you for your service, we dont have enough plastic spoons in our world
I’d love to be able to get into this at home. Some day I guess. Glad I found the channel in the meantime. Thanks John!
@The Untraveled Path Thank you! What 3D printer do you recommend? Something easy to get into, ready to go. Not too cheap but not a $1,000 printer either.
I am jawdropped as what I just witnessed. I am speechless. I am going to learn these skills too! You've inspired me!
You are never too old to learn.
As a technician/setter who uses 50t-650t machines. Seeing these little desktop machines is cool.
You Sir, are a master.... it was a joy watching your work.
Hey John! Thanks so much for helping us out with this project. Great job as always with the mold and very nice video too. Well done !!!
Ritchie
Amazing video. So glad we got to see the whole process including a finished part.
Great Vid! - you've got a new Patron.
Thank you very much!
Very cool to see the details of this underlooked process explained so clearly.
Woo I've been waiting ages for you to start up a Patreon. The information you've provided over the years and the time I've saved because of it *far* exceeds any monthly contribution I could offer.
If I'm being honest, you're one of the reasons I thought "hmmm...i can do this."
Fast forward a couple years and I've got a nomad 3 for milling my own little molds and one of Mannings machines for shooting them. (It's a dream to work with and Ritchie is ridiculously knowledgeable, a real pleasure to work with in my experience #notsponsored )
Thanks again John, I appreciate ya.
Thank you so much both for your kind words and your contribution. You're my first patron!
Thanks for the kind words Tyler. Glad the Proto-Ject machine is helping you with your endeavor. Stay in touch. - Ritchie
my man!! this is a thing of beauty!
What an amazing look into the process, start-to-finish!! It looks so easy, all I'm missing is a tormach :)
what did I just watch? Super cool to see this process.
I’m 27 seconds in and thinking, you took a mould from a super nice spoon.
Because the final spoon looks nice.
‘Sometimes I’ll sit here and watch it because it’s kinda mesmerising’ - You and me both 😂
You went through great lengths to explain the major steps of tooling.
great video. you remind me of my grandad (not in age, but in knowledge and temperament :) )
Great video! When creating molds for a part with uniform thickness you can simplify it using only surface model with no thickness. And the you add thickness in CAM using negative Stock To Leave on lower half mold
Doing that would mean you wouldn't have any draft. I'm also not sure how well that would work with things like REST machining. I generally like to have the CAD part, and therefore the mold CAD model, as close to the final milled parts as possible. That also allows me to use the CAM analysis tools that show deviation of the CAM results from the desired results.
Super cool! Ive made simple molds without curves and i would really like a challenge like that! It would be awesome if you could show how you generated the bowl/cup of the spoon. I guess it's two curves overlaping? One spherical and one oval? Maybe third sphere for depth?
Excellent video, thanks for the step by step & great video quality,
Este video es espectacular. Lo mejor que vi en todo el año.
wow that's amazing craftmanship
thank you john. that was very delightful.
Enjoyed the video, its got a very nice pacing to it. Great work, John.
Well done my friend, the entire process step by step! Thanks for sharing.
amazing amount of detail!
Very informative. As a designer its very intresting to see from a point of view of manufacturing.
Fantastic work. Well explained and a good look at the manning injection machine. Very cool.
Thank you for sharing, it's nice to see these details about the process. I do wonder, was this a real project for a real customer? I can't see any commercial value in this mold. For the price of that mold you can buy A LOT of plastic spoons. Now add the cost of the machine, and an employee to run that machine, and you are manufacturing the most expensive plastic spoons I can imagine, one at the time. It might have made some sense if the handle was branded or something, but I'm really failing to see the commercial use of this particular mold.
i work in injection molding PVC... for sure this is not for a mass produce... he is making 1 spoon a cycle I'm sure the spoon makers make 300-500 a cycle
wow nice
thank you for sharing this video, I wonder where does the air in the cavity move out of the mold when the material is coming in? I don't see any holes for air outlet in the mold.
Great video John! Thank you
Such a good detailed overview. Thanks for posting!
UA-cam knows my interests better than me… this was great.
Can you also do the injection from the top? Lets say you want to create 10 spoons at once. Is it possible to stack the molds together?
Nice job, always learn something new
I would never think I'd be so mesmerized by something so banal as plastic spoon manufacture. What is the client's purpose in such a small batch mold?
I'm not allowed to say why they wanted the mold. But it's not for production of spoons that they'll sell, which is why it's only a single cavity.
Nice job John! I would love see some videos from you trying to master FreeCAD to see what is missing to become better tool for mold injection like Fusion360! Thank you very much!
Great work Jon. Thanks for sharing.
Recent plastics engineering grad from UMass Lowell here. Initially I was intrigued why there had to be screwdriver slots milled into the A and B sides of the mold for mold opening. After watching the entire video I understood that there is no ejection system (such as ejection pins and/or ejection plate) and so it makes sense to add them. This begged the question that if the customer is making PP/PE/PS spoons and using this highly manual form of IM where even ejection is not automated (absent from a standard molding process), could this process be profitable given the low productivity and high human motion waste (lean mfg.) within the scope of the value of the product? Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed your design tweaks and tooling split demonstration for the spoon in Fusion and definitely took notes for future reference. CAD, Mill, and Mold on good sir!
P.S. I’ve read more comments and I now foolishly understand that this is a pilot mold for R&D purposes and that you were employed to modify the preexisting CAD model for DFIM. Nice work!!
Yes, it's a test mold rather than for production. Mold design for these desktop machines is probably quite different from what you learned in school.
This is amazing, thanks for sharing in this quality and detail
Excelente trabajo, gracias por compartir tu conocimiento y enseñarnos, saludos desde México 🇲🇽
Interesting, informative, and well made! Thanks for sharing
Hello John , First I’d like to say I enjoy your videos and your work looks great . I would like to know if you do this sort of work for the public? If so I have may have a few projects .
To feel the flame of dreaming and to feel the moment of dancing, when all the romance is far away, the eternity is always there.
Thanks John!
Nice work..
Really cool! I wonder, what if the customer was more sensitive to their specific design? Do you usually talk with the customer to get notes?
I always check with customers when I have questions. In this case, I talked with Ritchie who then talked the customer. I sent Ritchie images of the modifications I made to the design before I made the mold. The customer signed off on the changes. Does that answer your question?
@@JohnSL Yep, thank you!
I´m an industrial designer specialized in outsole designer for gentleman footwear, this is very interesting to watch, just a question, why don´t you put the injection hole below the spoon in the habdle to avoid any burr and more confortable user experience?
this content is a gem !!
this video is very informative, thank you
Looks like you're using enough coolant! 😂 nice work
nice tools. nice skills. I have cnc but it can only mill wood and plastic. for plastic i use 3d printing onl for few things
Really nice video sir, informative for beginners..
I have a question 🙋
1. During model revision for thickness, could you have cut the body into shaft and spoon and just use offset or press pull command in modify task bar.
2. How can we use curvature analysis tools to understand better.
3. Can we sumulate the mold flow in software to under stand material consumption, flow pattern, and filling & cooliny time
The main issue I was having with the shaft is that it didn't have a uniform thickness, and I wasn't able to remove the details. I learned the trick about offsetting a surface to make a new solid model after I'd modified the shaft. So, yes, that might have been easier. I showed how I approached it, which included me learning what worked and didn't work. Fusion 360 does have mold flow analysis software, but that's an add-on that is about $1,600 a year. If this were my business, rather than a hobby, that would certainly be worth investing in.
@@JohnSL yea certainly.
Your all your videos are interesting.
We are thank full for your hobby.
Curious as to why you selected hand polishing rather than using a rotary tool? Great videos!
Recent plastics engineering grad here… Typically you need a greater level of accuracy when polishing injection mold tooling than what a rotary tool offers. There are a few key considerations:
1: You want to try to not accidentally polish/abrade the parting line because flashing may occur during molding. A steady hand with manual polishing is an easy way to ensure quality craftsmanship where “just enough” material is polished away and the perimeter of the parting line is left intact. If a careful, steady handed level of care is taken, it is much more difficult to accidentally screw up the parting line. Look at any lower quality product you’ve purchased from let’s say, Walmart. Chances are you will see a thin line of plastic protruding from the part. This is flash, it is undesirable aesthetically and in the case of a spoon it may be uncomfortable to eat with because it could scratch your mouth if bad enough.
2: Only a small amount of material needs to be sanded/abraded/polished away to remove tool marks for most CNC tool paths using fine tooling like this gentleman used in this part. If you get too overzealous with a rotary tool then the dimensions of the final cavity (cavity essentially=the final dimensions of the empty space in the mold which fills with plastic to form the final part) will be off to a larger degree than if you took your time doing it by hand. An injection mold is meant to produce at least 10s of thousands of parts, so make sure you spend time on mold polishing to ensure that your plethora of parts are as pretty as they can be. Mold making is not a speedy process if done with extreme care.
Hope you found this helpful! Message me if you have any other questions!
It's a very interesting process. Thank you for sharing.
I can't help but wonder, why would anyone spend the money on a custom mold for a spoon that doesn't appear to be any different than what you can easily purchase by the hundreds for pennies each? Am I missing something?
I was given permission to make a video of this mold as long as I didn't divulge why the customer wanted this mold. So, unfortunately, I'm not allowed to explain why.
well, you can assume that this spoon will not be made by the hundreds, based on the injection molding machine used. there's also a hint about the material the customer will use - the original design is like any polystyrene spoon but he had to make heavy changes to account for high viscosity in the materal.
I am really invested in figuring out the secret behind this single spoon mold now
Great to see the whole process, thanks!
Excellent - mankind is saved.
😀
That was so educating. Thank you.
This is fascinating! Very well done and informative, thank you.
Increible, me lo e visto completo e tenido que poner subtitulos, pero es muy buen contenido para aprender un montón sobre maquinados, saludos de México
This is great information. I have an idea for a four filter that I need to be Created. this helps me to see the steps. I have to get ready for. now. To find someone who can make it for me. Thank you
Hats off... You are awesome...
Hello, I am very happy to have found your video and to meet you, I live in Iran and I am a medical engineer living in one of the underprivileged areas of Iran, I am currently doing dental handpiece repairs, I am considering I want to produce a number of silicon parts that are used in dental turbines. Since I don't have the equipment, I plan to get a metal mold to make silicone parts so that I can gain experience with the existing manual equipment. I request you to give me Please help me with your own experience in making the part that is sent in the link below its photo, so that I know what type of mold and what size is suitable for the manual molding press, so that I can get the maximum number in each silicone injection. Thank you for your efforts and thank you for your help.
Awesome video
Amazing 😍
Thanks for giving us your experience 😍
Great video. Serious question: how feasible and cost effective is it to do the modeling princess shown For a single plastic spoon? Seems like it would not be an efficient use of time and resources for such a product.
I wasn't quite sure what you're asking. If you're asking if it's feasible to produce these spoons for sale with this mold, the answer is definitely not. Production molds would be able to produce many spoons at the same time. They have other reasons for wanting this mold, which I'm not allowed to disclose.
@@JohnSL yep that was my question, thanks for the reply. Your reason makes sense! Looking forward to some more videos, subscribed!