Machine/ Mould Cost Help

Hi Everyone,

New to the forum! Im currently trying to plan a facility with a few injection moulding machines and trying to estimate costs. Ive designed lots of parts that were subcontracted before but never got into machine/tool purchasing so if anyone could help that would be great! Ill give some background

I have a number of parts to be made in approx. 15-20,000 units pa each. For now, lets say I have 3:
• Part A is like a go-kart seat only a little bigger, so say 700x400x400mm: a number of bosses and features
• Part B is like a big dish about 400x300x150mm: a number of bosses and features
• Part C is a small bracket about 150x150x30mm of which I have a left and right hand sided component, hoping to be done in the same cavity. Simple mould.

All parts will be in PP or modified PP but lets say PP for now and 3mm thick. All parts are two piece moulds, no undercuts and hoping for a lifespan of 5 years on moulds at least.

So Im trying to estimate costs for tooling and capital – don’t get me wrong, this is a total finger in the air guess that Im just using to get approximate figures for now, Im well aware of many features contributing to cost. We are going to start with looking at the higher end machines (Krauss, Engel, Arburg) and go from there. Moulds also hoping to be made in Europe. So, could anyone help me with estimating moulds and machine costs?

Based on moulding factor of 3ton/in^2 or approx. 6500psi(450 bar) for PP, this would give estimated tonnages of
• Part A – 1432 ton/14036kN
• Part B – 614ton / 6015kN
• Part C – 220ton/2153kN

Capital Costs – Complete finger in the air here as Ive never bought such things.
• Part A – 1500 ton machine, €600k?
• Part B – say 700 ton machine, €300k?
• Part C – say 250 ton machine, €150k?

Then, to estimate costs for tooling,
• Part A - €140k?
• Part B - €60k?
• Part C – €35k?

Thanks so much for any help and I know this is a simplified version, were about 18 months out but just to get starting points. Thankyou

I’m not involved with the business end of the industry, so I can’t really help, but I have to say I’m not seeing the economics here. Three machines each running 20,000 parts in 3 mm thick poly-pro annually? Even running only one shift five days a week – what are you going to do for the other ten months of the year?

If you made your part C tool a 4 cavity family mold (2 each left and right), you could probably run it on your part B press. So you’d (roughly) double the mold cost for part C, but save the machine cost.

Hey Jay,
Thanks for the reply. Yeah you're correct the plan is to do other parts as well, a few of which are similar ish-sizes, so the economics should stack up quite well, I just didnt want to go into chapter and verse as I thought it would be a bit much. But thats a good idea about doubling up the part C cavity: sometimes you get so bogged down in things its hard to see the obvious. Cracking, thanks.

Your estimates seem pretty good tbh
As a rule of thumb, machine price is around half the overall tonnage
Those tooling numbers look okay too.. Maybe cheaper for lower volume runs, steel options etc

You need to look at support equipment as well. Grinders, mold heaters, loaders, conveyors, robots?, air compressors, etc Not as big of a hit as the machines themselves, but it does add up

Thanks Chrisprocess, iautry1973. Thats great, its just to have some confidence Im in the correct area of numbers. About the support equipment, yeah I agree; going to look at that now thanks - ill undoubtedly have to refine everything over the next few months now but great to get a starting point.

This is a great forum by the way guys, was looking through some old posts there: thanks for letting me be part of it and hope I can contribute.