3 Options for Designing Your Custom Plastic Container
When you have a need for a custom plastic container, think about using a blow mold design. Blow molding is a very flexible manufacturing process used to make hollow plastic containers at an affordable price.
There are actually 3 ways to develop a blow mold design:
1. Extrusion blow molding (dairy containers, shampoo bottles, hoses, pipes, etc.,)
2. Injection blow molding (small medical bottles, single serve bottles, etc.,)
3. Stretch blow molding (soft drink bottles, jars, etc.)
Each blow mold design is more appropriate for one type of container over another. Blow molding lends itself well to making custom containers, but which process to use is dependent on a number of things.
To give an example of using a blow mold design, we will use a fictitious product – a steak sauce that will be celebrating its 100th anniversary. To acknowledge the 100th anniversary, we want to come out with an anniversary edition of the steak sauce. The new blow mold design needs to look like the original steak sauce bottle, but we want to make it in plastic.
From a marketing standpoint, there are a number of reasons why it would be good to come out with the anniversary edition steak sauce:
- It’s iconic and commemorative
- Having a product celebrate its 100th anniversary is a big deal
- Most likely, all of the customers grew up using this product
- Putting out a special anniversary edition would help increase sales
Is that enough to justify the cost of creating a custom blow mold design? You need to answer that.
We want the “anniversary” blow mold design to look like the original steak sauce bottle:
- It will be an amber-colored bottle that will hold 16 ounces
- The blow mold design is unique, and it will have a screw-on cap
- The plastic must be biodegradable
- The anniversary bottle will be on the market for six months
Looking at the various blow mold design processes, we can see that injection molding is not used for this type of product, so we can rule that process out.
It appears that extrusion blow mold designs and stretch blow mold designs might both be viable choices for your custom bottle.
Which one will you choose?
You need to find a blow molding manufacturer that can develop a blow mold design for your custom bottle and that best fits your needs:
· Is there a manufacturer that you’ve worked with before that could develop a blow mold design for your custom bottle?
· Do you need a manufacturer that is local?
· Do you need a manufacturer that specializes in creating blow mold designs for your custom bottle?
· Can they produce the blow mold design for your bottle in the timeframe you have in mind?
· Finally, are they affordable?
You don’t need a special occasion to have a need for a custom container – your reason could be celebratory, or it could be a very ordinary situation. Whatever the reason, the process of developing a blow mold design and having a custom container produced will be the same. Using a blow mold design could be a very attractive option for you, both aesthetically and fiscally.
At Microdyne we are fully equipped to help you create the custom container you need – from design to completion. We offer both design engineering and tooling, and extrusion and stretch blow molding capabilities. We invite you to browse our site and read through our blog entries. We will be happy to answer any questions you might have.
