Design guides for plastic enclosure and hinged plastic parts.

[arsenal75]

Hi, I am looking for information and design guides for intergrated hinges for injection mouldings. It there any good sources for this type of information? I am also looking for design guides for plastic covers which are generally found on products such as remote controls and portable audio equipment (eg. battery covers).

Please can anyone help?

Thanks

 

[nigelt]

The impression I have is that you are very close to the base of a steep learning curve!
That's fine but without wishing to sound unpleasant, if you are planning to develop a product from ground up with no experience, then perhaps your best guide book is the Yellow Pages under Product Design and Development or Industrial Design, etc in your local area.
As my employer is actually paying for my time to respond to this, I am not abashed to suggest you check out

http://www.freshproductdesign.com

Otherwise, a good book for plastic design engineering for this market is "Designing Plastic Parts for Assembly" by Paul Tres, Hanser Publ. - it includes living hinges. "The ideal client is one possessed of great good sense and perfect judgement;
that is to say, one who agrees entirely with the designer at all times and in every respect."
Fenwick Williams, Naval Architect.

 

[arsenal75]

Thanks for your reply. I was actually after calculations that are required to produce the detail designs on CAD. I've got the concepts for the hinge design but I need to ensure that they will work with the material that I intend to use for the plastics(Polycarb).

The book you mentioned, is it available only in the US/Canada.

 

[nigelt]

I am afraid you may be disappointed as living hinges are really only known to function with polyethylene and polypropylene. Any polymer like ABS or PC will rightaway go white at the bend, and fail without more ado. However, I'd be happy to be shown the circumstances under which a hinge in these matls would work.
Anyway, that book has design dims for living hinge in PE / PP.
The ISBN no. on our copy is 1-56990-168-6 (Hanser/Gardner Publications, Ohio) & for edition published in 1994 in Germany 3-446-17594-6 (Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich). I am sure it's available worldwide.
Cheers. "The ideal client is one possessed of great good sense and perfect judgement;
that is to say, one who agrees entirely with the designer at all times and in every respect."
Fenwick Williams, Naval Architect.

 

[Torge]

Eee gad! living hinges!

You may want to re-think that option. How long do they really live? <--- not long me thinks, regardless of the material, or weather the operator tweaked the part straight out of the mold.