What’s the True Cost of Your Molds?

What’s the True Cost of Your Mold?

If the cost of your plastic mold seems as opaque to you as the plastic that makes up your parts or products, you’re not alone. Many customers come to REX Plastics with only the vaguest idea of how mold-making works, to say nothing of the processes and costs involved. Since transparency is as important to us as quality, we would like to take a minute of your time and explain how your mold cost is calculated. 

The Hidden Costs of Overseas Molds

Let’s start as some of our less-fortunate customers have, by looking into overseas mold-makers before buying American. There’s a reason many products are stamped “Made in China” these days. It’s inexpensive — at least in theory. Yes, tooling and production costs are lower, but there are a number of so-called “downstream” costs to outsourcing your injection mold making to another country instead of having it done here at home.

Quality control is vital to your product and reputation, just as it is for ours. The problem is, when your production facility is thousands of miles away on another continent, how do you ensure quality and consistency? Some resort to hiring “consultants” — in reality, local fixers who grease the appropriate palms, and who might keep half an eye on production if you’re lucky — but that gets expensive. So, too, does taking QC into your own hands, since that takes frequent calls, emails, and visits to facilities that are more likely to view you as an intruder than a valued customer.

Something else to question is whether that mold was made to the highest standards in the first place. Subpar tooling, subprime materials, poor design, or just as often some combination of the three can often mean multiple attempts to get the mold right. Those savings you thought you were getting are soon vanishing faster than your bank balance.

Calculating Costs of a Rex Plastics Mold

Let’s pull back the curtain on the true, and entire, cost of your mold. Since there are many considerations that go into costs — and the price of an injection mold is only one of them — we’ll leave the back-of-the-envelope math to you, but this calculator can help you get a handle on the cost of your mold, and to better compare the cost of an American-made mold to its overseas counterpart.

• Mold Price
• Travel (airfare, food, and lodging)
• Transportation
• Communications
• Shipping prints
• Consultant or broker fees
• Mold tryout
• Reworking
• Lost production due to reworking
• Shipping
• Maintenance and repairs

Not all of these will apply in all cases, of course. Some of these costs can also be offset or avoided, and when you can do that — especially when it comes to avoiding production downtime due to poor quality — it should go without saying that we suggest you do so.

Why Rex Plastics?

Besides the fact that your mold will be made in the USA (and your product can also bear that stamp) to the high standards set by the American Mold Builders Association (AMBA), there are many reasons to choose Rex Plastics. In short, we’re local, we’re consistent, and we are accountable. Try getting that overseas — as many of our customers have tried to do and failed before coming to us — and you’ll understand the difference our products make to our customers. Contact us to request a quote on your project today!