Plastic Sports Bottle Molding Manufacturer

Plastic Sports Bottle Molding Customization

This project is a sports bottle that cyclists can open with one hand and drink water during riding. It consists of three parts: plastic lid, blow-moulded bottle body and filter element. Super filter paper is assembled inside the filter element. In the outdoor environment, users can put natural water into the bottle, squeeze the bottle body, let the water filter through the filter paper and drink it. This design concept is very practical and very environmentally friendly.

We understand that there are three key issues that need to be addressed. First, better sealing function than regular kettle lids. Second, additional structures need to be designed to fix the filter element. Third, it is necessary to design a gas nozzle to coordinate the internal and external pressure difference of the bottle body during the extrusion process.

After a thorough exchange of opinions with the client, this water bottle named Click Lid became the first cooperation project between us. Do you think there is a conflict between the valve structure and the more powerful water sealing function? Don’t worry, please continue to browse this case.

Product Design for Plastic Sports Bottle Molding

Our factory has 18 years of manufacturing experience in the plastic mould and injection moulding industry. We have excellent English communication skills and a good engineering understanding of plastic mold manufacturing and injection molding processes. From design to production, we communicate smoothly with customers, accurately convey opinions and suggestions, assist customers to analyze and eliminate unreasonable factors in mold manufacturing and injection molding, and complete every step proactively, objectively and accurately.

Our product designers are not only skilled in using UG, AUTOCAD, PS, and CDR software, but also have more than ten years of rich experience in mold manufacturing and injection molding. Drawing reasonable and accurate product design drawings is the premise for the smooth progress of this plastic sports bottle molding mass production.

Plastic Prototype Manufacturing of Sports Water Bottle

Fast prototyping validates product designs. At different stages of product design, it is necessary to use 3D printing technology or CNC machining to manufacture a quick prototype to verify whether the product design is reasonable and whether it can achieve the effects and functions that customers want.

For this project, the plastic cap base was made with 3DMAX’s SLA/SLS 3D printing, and the top cover was made with CNC machining and vacuum casting. The natural color of 3D printing materials is generally white, which is not conducive to displaying the appearance of the product. Therefore, we will also do surface finishes on the plastic prototype, such as sandblasting, polishing, and oil injection.

After the prototype is manufactured, our product designers and mold engineers will discuss and come up with improvement plans, and then make a report and send it to the client. According to customer requirements, we made three prototypes in total, and finally determined the perfect design plan in the customer’s mind. In this process, every prototype has a lot of credit to help the customer find more reasonable and accurate improvement directions and solutions.

Mold Design for Plastic Sports Bottle Molding

After the prototype is confirmed, we can use the confirmed product design drawing as the final product drawing and put it into the steel mold manufacturing stage. Our tooling engineers work closely with customers and with product designers. This careful evaluation often reveals small details that can be modified, helping our mold engineers to make the best mold opening plan and then design the most reasonable mold drawing.

Select Mold Steel

Determine the Number of Mold Cavities

• 1. According to our many years of injection molding experience, its molding time is about 60S, and the daily production capacity of the 2-cavities mold is about 2500pcs, which can meet the monthly demand of customers in terms of production efficiency.
• 2. The 4-cavities mold is more efficient, but the cost of the mold will be much higher. From the perspective of customer interests, the choice of 2-cavities is the most economical.
• 3. The lid of the water bottle is round, and the top is the apparence surface. The glue feeding from the top will affect the appearance of the product. The design of two cavities can make the design of the side glue inlet more reasonable.
• 4. The outer ring of the plastic bottle cap has a concave design, and it is necessary to design a slider in the mold for good demoulding. A two-cavities mold is just right for designing such a slider.

Determine the Location of the Injection Gate

Double Thread Design

The thread of the bottle cap is adapted to the external thread of the blow-molded bottle. When the molding result is neat, it can give the user a good experience. Therefore, we avoid forced demoulding, but use the rack to drag the pinion insert to rotate and unthread. The rack stroke and gear ratio are calculated accurately by our engineers. In order to prevent the product from rotating during the rotation of the gear insert, we designed some small slots at the bottom of the plastic cover to better fix the product on the back mold.

There is another thread in the centre of the cap. We have done a double-layer rotary de-threading mold before, and our experience tells us that the cooling system cannot be designed inside the rotating insert, which will lead to a poor cooling effect of the product during the injection molding process. So how to solve this problem? Since a cooling system is necessary, we use replaceable movable inserts to form the middle thread. Inserts are placed into the mold before each molding. When the lid is formed, remove the movable insert. Can it be forced out? No, preferably not. Because from the point of view of product function, after the filter element and the cover are assembled together, the excellent water sealing effect is still the first important thing. Otherwise, the filtering effect of the filter element will be useless.

Prevent Product Shrinkage

Select Hot Runner or Cold Runner

Draw Mold Diagram

In this plastic water bottle mold, a very important point is the design of the rotatable mold inserts and the prediction of the motion state after assembly. The oil cylinder drives the rack to do branch line movement, and then the rack drives the gears at all levels to rotate, and finally realizes the rotation and backward movement of the inner thread insert. This puts forward higher requirements for mold design engineers. There can be many small inserts that cooperate with each other inside the boxy mold shape.

Steel Mold for Plastic Sports Bottle Molding

Mold manufacturing is generally divided into the following 5 steps:

• 1. Customized LKM mold base reprocessing, including CNC machining, drilling to manufacture water cooling/oil heating systems, wire cutting of insert holes and thimble holes, etc.
• 2. Process the mold core, including wire cutting, drilling, CNC machining and EDM machining, etc.
• 3. Process mold parts, including CNC turning, CNC milling, Sodick wire cutting, precision grinding, milling, EDM processing, etc., and mark each part with laser marking.
• 4. Procurement and reprocessing of standard mold parts.
• 5. Mold assembly and adaptation work.

Quality control at every step of mold making is important. The most important thing is the final mold assembly and adaptation. Assembling the finished mold parts one by one requires not only accurate cooperation between them, but also smooth mutual movement between them, so as to ensure that the mold can work stably during the injection molding process.

Plastic Sports Bottle Molding Process

After the mold assembly is completed, T0 mold trial and trial injection molding are required. The purpose is to check whether the opening and closing process of the mold is smooth, whether the mutual movement between the mold core inserts is smooth, and whether the movement of the ejector structure is consistent with the design. During the mold trial stage, our injection molding technicians, mold manufacturing technicians, and mold design engineers for the mold all need to be on the production site.

Prepare PP plastic raw materials and toner/masterbatch according to Pantone color code requirements. After the mold runs smoothly, the injection molding technician adjusts the molding conditions of the injection molding machine for trial injection. The injection temperature needs to be selected according to the characteristics of PP plastic raw materials. Injection pressure needs to be tried gradually in order from low to high. Injection molding time and cooling time also need to be adjusted according to the appearance of the plastic product tested each time. After many adjustments and trials, we got the perfect plastic sample. At this time, record these molding conditions and make a trial report.

After the customer confirms the trial sample, we carry out mass production according to the injection molding conditions of this Golden Sample. The SOP document must be learned and properly understood and implemented by employees during the training session. IPQC’s inspection work is also not to be ignored. With everyone’s joint efforts, we can control the quality of batch products.

Blow Molding of Water Bottle Body

On the basis of good communication with customers, we also assist customers to design the bottle model. Blow molding is a process that belongs to thermoplastic molding. For the unified management of the entire project and to ensure the stable quality of each link, we provide customers with contract manufacturing services to assist in the blow molding process of this bottle.

Based on our quality control concept for plastic products, our client trusts us to entrust the quality control of this blow molding product to us. At the same time, they also save communication time and cost control corresponding to multiple suppliers. This is also the value embodiment of our one-stop service for our customers.

Product Assembly, Packaging Customization and Shipping Services

This series of work can be done under our control. The customers only need to explain their ideas and requirements to us, instead of dealing with all kinds of cumbersome affairs with three or four suppliers. It can avoid the cooperation problem of all parties and the conflict between different production plans. This is also the core value of our one-stop ODM service for our customers. We focus not only on high-quality products but also on high-quality customer service.

Your One-stop Manufacturer for Customization

When you choose Sungplastic , you get a professional partner through the entire production cycle. Timely, professional, and effective communication is always with you, taking your product from concept or drawing to reality.