Nowadays, plastic crate products have permeated various industries and we could see there are many types of plastic crate products in the market: some crates are designed with the hole on the side surface and bottom side, some crates without the hole, and some can folding, with cover, save water. These kinds of crate designs are widely used for transportation or storage of fruit and vegetables that the hole can make the smooth air circulation with fresh-keeping for the goods.

We all know the folding crate boxes are popular because the foldable crate can save space for folding and stacking, rugging, light weight, and can save transportation costs.

To provide a suitable solution and perfect mold design, we need to know the features of plastic crate function or performance to have a good understanding of the product. How do manufacturers make the good plastic crate under the same tooling processing? The mold design and solution is the key point for the steel material selection, injection system, cooling system, and ejector system that all can ensure the good quality of the mold and the same for crate product.

Mold Steel Material-To ensure the mold life can meet the production requirements, it is necessary to choose the suitable steel materials and make the appropriate hardening treatment for the mold steel material of main parts and mold base. Normally we use P20, DIN1.2738, DIN1.2346, DIN1.2344, S136, etc..for the crate mold, and after you choose the suitable steel material then we need to make the multiple processes for processing such as gorging, CNC milling rough machining, quenching and tempering, CNC milling finishing and other processing procedures. Otherwise, no matter how cheap the mold price is, the quality can not be guaranteed and cause unnecessary issues during the production: at the beginning, these molds can run for a while, but after some shots, the part of the mold may have some issue that you need stop the production then to fix or change the parts, it will cause extra cost and lost time.

Injection System- it can help the plastic crate product make the injection molding better. For example, some plastic crate manufacturers will use recycle plastic material to make the crate production to save the cost and protect the environment. But it may have other things in the recycled material, so we need to design the correct mold ejection system to avoid some small iron chips and gravel from entering the mold cavity.

Cooling System-It can make the crate production with a shorter cycle time but higher efficiency. If you would like to shorten the cycle time, you must optimize the mold cooling system, such as an independent water channel, a more appropriate distance between the cooling channel and mold parting line surface, etc...

Ejector System- A good ejector system can help you improve the production efficiency such as a mechanical ejecting mold structure: mold open with ejecting together can save the ejecting time to reduce the cycle time during the production.

Interchangeable Design- Making the design of interchangeable inserts can reduce the cost of repeated investment, such as the height of the crate, bottom design with the hole or without hole, handle, etc.