Injection molding with HDPE

I have an idea for a new consumer product that, I think, would be best manufactured using high density Polyethylene. The trouble is, I know nothing regarding how to go about this. Via web searching, there seem to be lots of companies that will contract manufacture for me, but is that the best route? I'm clueless.

In addition to figuring out how to make the product, I need to figure out how to patent it, if possible, to at least slow down copycats. Not to mention the whole notion of creating a business around it to sell the item.

Thoughts and advice welcome!

Is it really injection moldable without a lot of expensive slides?

Make sure you do things in the correct order. Patenting comes first, then talking to injection molders. If you make a public disclosure about your invention, you automatically lose the right to patent it. A public disclosure could basically mean telling anybody unless it is explicit that they are under a confidentiality agreement.

Fortunately, patenting is cheap and easy for the first year or so. You just need to file a provisional patent which you can do yourself online for about $125 IIRC. Go to the USPTO website and read all their directions. It looks a lot more complicated than it actually is.

As far as injection molding, I would recommend protolabs.com (not affiliated in any way) their Protomold service has given me the lowest mold prices out of anyone and as a plus they do all their work in the US which also significantly slows down copycats. They also have a lot of good design documents on their site that teach you how to design for injection molding.

Let me know if you have any questions. I love this kind of stuff.

Ranger50 wrote: Is it really injection moldable without a lot of expensive slides?

I'm so clueless that I don't even know what that means.

madpanda wrote: Make sure you do things in the correct order. Patenting comes first, then talking to injection molders. If you make a public disclosure about your invention, you automatically lose the right to patent it. A public disclosure could basically mean telling anybody unless it is explicit that they are under a confidentiality agreement. Fortunately, patenting is cheap and easy for the first year or so. You just need to file a provisional patent which you can do yourself online for about $125 IIRC. Go to the USPTO website and read all their directions. It looks a lot more complicated than it actually is. As far as injection molding, I would recommend protolabs.com (not affiliated in any way) their Protomold service has given me the lowest mold prices out of anyone and as a plus they do all their work in the US which also significantly slows down copycats. They also have a lot of good design documents on their site that teach you how to design for injection molding. Let me know if you have any questions. I love this kind of stuff.

Great info. Thanks! I'll start with the patent website and go from there. Once I file for a provisional, am I safe to talk with the molding companies?

Care to share more? I'd be happy to help.

• Does it really require injection molding? Vs. vac-forming, pressure forming, etc?
• Can you use soft tooling? What's your quantity?
• Do you have a 3d model of it?

If its a simple part, paying someone to manufacture may be the easy button. If its complex with inserts/undercuts/etc. then you may need a good supplier to work with that can provide some design work for you.

dyintorace wrote:

madpanda wrote: Make sure you do things in the correct order. Patenting comes first, then talking to injection molders. If you make a public disclosure about your invention, you automatically lose the right to patent it. A public disclosure could basically mean telling anybody unless it is explicit that they are under a confidentiality agreement. Fortunately, patenting is cheap and easy for the first year or so. You just need to file a provisional patent which you can do yourself online for about $125 IIRC. Go to the USPTO website and read all their directions. It looks a lot more complicated than it actually is. As far as injection molding, I would recommend protolabs.com (not affiliated in any way) their Protomold service has given me the lowest mold prices out of anyone and as a plus they do all their work in the US which also significantly slows down copycats. They also have a lot of good design documents on their site that teach you how to design for injection molding. Let me know if you have any questions. I love this kind of stuff.

Great info. Thanks! I'll start with the patent website and go from there. Once I file for a provisional, am I safe to talk with the molding companies?

Yes and no. Make them sign an NDA.

Patent the item, then shop it to major retailers or manufacturers. Let them pay you to license the patent and they can deal with the production headaches.

I agree an NDA is a good idea even after a provisional because people might try to figure out a way around your patent or they might copy your invention knowing you won't have the funds to pursue them in court.

That being said, from a purely patent rights point of view, the provisional will protect you for a while. You just need to file the full patent application within a year. That step will cost more and depending on how much money you stand to make, you may want to get some professional patent help involved at that point.

Under no circumstances, patent or not, do not offshore the work to China, because it WILL get copied.

Now, I'm a fan of open sourcing everything. If another hobbyist wants to spend the time and money to produce an item that I'm already selling at likely a lower cost than they can, then go for it. Check into some of the open source licenses. Some allow another party to make copies with credit to you for the design, while others only allow improvements with credit to you for the original design. Unless you're thinking about large scale production, where there would be plenty of money to be made with a competing product, chances are no one will bother making copies.

Additionally, you need a lawyer to protect the patent. You're going to be sending out plenty of cease and desist orders if your product does get copied.

Patents can often cost more to defend than the revenue lost from copies.

I've been in the plastics industry in a variety of roles since the mid-80's. Production molding, materials application and development, business development for an automotive injection molding company, and now process machinery. Plastics Engineering degree. I'm happy to help if I can.

I agree with the course suggested above. Patent app filed and an NDA submitted when asking others for input or quotes. Most mold makers and production injection molders, from my experience, are more focused on their business than copying someone else's product. They typically don't have distribution channels for getting products to market as that's their customers business. Keep the work in the US to slow down copycats. Unless your patent application and patent (if approved) is airtight, copycats will find a way around it usually easily.

BTW-Can I ask how you came to select HDPE for the part? Low cost, chemical resistance, etc?

Todd

The people who make money off all the niche inventions tend to be the people who own the pipeline to the market; think home shopping network. There are middlemen who specialize in getting your product into the big box stores. The stores like to work with these guys because they know the rules; as an individual, good luck getting a product into any of the large retailers.

Anyways, good luck with this since people do on occasion get it to work. If nothing else, if you do go ahead and it all goes wrong, take a deep breath and take note of what you have learned so you can apply it on the next go-round. That is how most entrepreneurs get rich.

The people who make money off all the niche inventions tend to be the people who own the pipeline to the market; think home shopping network. There are middlemen who specialize in getting your product into the big box stores. The stores like to work with these guys because they know the rules; as an individual, good luck getting a product into any of the large retailers.

Anyways, good luck with this since people do on occasion get it to work. If nothing else, if you do go ahead and it all goes wrong, take a deep breath and take note of what you have learned so you can apply it on the next go-round. That is how most entrepreneurs get rich.

ProDarwin wrote: Care to share more? I'd be happy to help. * Does it really require injection molding? Vs. vac-forming, pressure forming, etc? * Can you use soft tooling? What's your quantity? * Do you have a 3d model of it? If its a simple part, paying someone to manufacture may be the easy button. If its complex with inserts/undercuts/etc. then you may need a good supplier to work with that can provide some design work for you.

I'll send a PM.

wawazat wrote: I've been in the plastics industry in a variety of roles since the mid-80's. Production molding, materials application and development, business development for an automotive injection molding company, and now process machinery. Plastics Engineering degree. I'm happy to help if I can. I agree with the course suggested above. Patent app filed and an NDA submitted when asking others for input or quotes. Most mold makers and production injection molders, from my experience, are more focused on their business than copying someone else's product. They typically don't have distribution channels for getting products to market as that's their customers business. Keep the work in the US to slow down copycats. Unless your patent application and patent (if approved) is airtight, copycats will find a way around it usually easily. BTW-Can I ask how you came to select HDPE for the part? Low cost, chemical resistance, etc? Todd

I'll send a PM to you as well!

NOHOME wrote: The people who make money off all the niche inventions tend to be the people who own the pipeline to the market; think home shopping network. There are middlemen who specialize in getting your product into the big box stores. The stores like to work with these guys because they know the rules; as an individual, good luck getting a product into any of the large retailers. Anyways, good luck with this since people do on occasion get it to work. If nothing else, if you do go ahead and it all goes wrong, take a deep breath and take note of what you have learned so you can apply it on the next go-round. That is how most entrepreneurs get rich.

All good thoughts to heed. This would be a pretty low volume item, sold direct to consumers via the web. I don't foresee it getting nearly big enough to act as my primary source of income. I'll be happy if it actually gets to market and makes a little bit of money.

If you're looking at low volume, you should look at having the items machined instead of molded. Your cost per part is super cheap once you've made enough parts to pay for the mold, but that's usually expensive. If you want series production, there is probably a machine shop with a CNC mill that could make your widget over and over for a modest setup charge and a reasonable minimum quantity.

I'm a consumer product designer, and I would recommend against going the whole lawyer/patent route unless you're going to produce absolute tons of these widgets. You probably won't be copied, and you probably won't have the volume to recoup the legal fees to get a patent.

An NDA should be enough to cover you with the machine shop or any other vendor you shop the work out to.

What are the rough dimensions of it? Injection molding anything in even the simplest of tools is going to be $5K+ with a realistic tooling cost of 25-40K and that's for a part that would fit in a say 15x15x15" box. You may if it's small enough get 3dproparts, Protomold, Vistatek type Prototype Quick molding type people to look at it but expect part cost to be ~10-30x what it would cost out of a real tool. I've not been in the plastics industry but have had ~50 plastic injection molded parts brought to production with 15-20 different vendors.

BAMF wrote: If you're looking at low volume, you should look at having the items machined instead of molded. Your cost per part is super cheap once you've made enough parts to pay for the mold, but that's usually expensive. If you want series production, there is probably a machine shop with a CNC mill that could make your widget over and over for a modest setup charge and a reasonable minimum quantity. I'm a consumer product designer, and I would recommend against going the whole lawyer/patent route unless you're going to produce absolute tons of these widgets. You probably won't be copied, and you probably won't have the volume to recoup the legal fees to get a patent. An NDA should be enough to cover you with the machine shop or any other vendor you shop the work out to.

I'm up for any/all suggestions. The only solid part of this plan right now is that I know what the end product should look like (it's a very simple design - basically a novelty product). I'd love to sell thousands of them but that would be best case scenario.

nocones wrote: What are the rough dimensions of it? Injection molding anything in even the simplest of tools is going to be $5K+ with a realistic tooling cost of 25-40K and that's for a part that would fit in a say 15x15x15" box. You may if it's small enough get 3dproparts, Protomold, Vistatek type Prototype Quick molding type people to look at it but expect part cost to be ~10-30x what it would cost out of a real tool. I've not been in the plastics industry but have had ~50 plastic injection molded parts brought to production with 15-20 different vendors.

It will probably be 10"-12" tall, 6"-8" in circumference and ~2 lbs.

What is your expected annual sales volume? I'm by no means a patent expert but unless you are thinking of very high volumes of a part with good margin I doubt a patent is worth it. It adds $5-10K to your bring to market costs which will be on top of your 5-15K tooling costs. If this is a direct to consumer non-value add part I wonder if you margins could be high enough to sustain both tooling and patent costs. And if they are then you would need to worry about patents.

My last company used Blow Canoes grade resin to mold a radiator overflow bottle, that was hotplate welded together. Burst testing was done, the part required 150 PSI or air for the weldline to fail.   [yadda yadda yadda]

Loving the plastics expertise from the GRM team. There are plenty of nice hdpe grades for injection loding in the 20- 50 MFI range that shoud work nicely for you. There is a bunch of great advice above and you'll notice that a majority of it is tooling related as that will be the major investment.

From what i have read to get a worthwhile patient you are going to realistically need to spend $10k-50k+ for those pat lawyers. Then every conceivable variant of your product needs to be thought out and patented and the above mentioned lawyering...

Someone please step in if that is way off base. I would like to hear otherwise.

As a China plastic molding supplier,we could make a batch as small as 200 canoes,but the price for each item will be very high due to the tooling cost.

I have a very details information for how to get injection molding canoes done in correctly