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Pricing Guide: China Injection Molding Cost

"How much does the China injection molding cost to make my product?"; "Is there any way to lower the mold cost in China?". These are the most common questions we hear from our customers, especially start-ups.

It's quite understandable that the injection molding cost of a new plastic part is critical and sensitive, particularly when your budget is tight for a new design.

There are many factors that can affect the cost on making a mold and running molding production. Here we show you three examples how the various pricing might have. Please note that the price can vary depending on your parts size, weight and complexity.

Injection Molding Cost Examples

Three real-world examples showing how part size, material, and complexity affect pricing

Small Simple Part
Small & Simple
$1,000 USD
Tooling Cost
$0.45 USD
Piece Price
5,000 pcs batch 46×16×8mm ABS/PC 2.5g
Medium Part
Medium Size
$3,500 USD
Tooling Cost
$0.39 USD
Piece Price
100,000 pcs batch 114×75×32mm Hypro PP-CP 40.2g
Complex Part
Complex & High-Temp
$11,000 USD
Tooling Cost
$4.20 USD
Piece Price
5,000 pcs batch 110×65×60mm LCP-Vectra S135 75.8g

What Affects China Injection Molding Cost?

If your molds remain with Plastopia for production, it's simple, just 5 factors to consider:

1

Molding Materials

The plastic molding material you selected will affect both tooling cost and piece pricing, which varies from different types of materials. High-temperature engineering plastics like LCP and PEEK are significantly more expensive than commodity resins like PP and ABS.

LCP
Highest
PA
High
PC
Medium
ABS
Low
PP
Lowest
Material Selection
2

Part Colors

The part color is the factor that designers and product engineers will neglect, as they assume piece pricing of all colors is the same.

However, if your part is white or transparent, the molding price will be higher than other regular colors. A cleaner molding condition adds cost for molding factories.

White — Higher Cost Transparent — Higher Cost Black — Standard Blue — Standard Red — Standard Green — Standard
Part Colors
3

Part Complexity

Complexity plays a vital role in molding costs. It adds extra works to mold making and more steps on molding production.

Tolerance requirements, fine detailing, or the number of undercuts are the main reasons.

To re-design your part as a simplified version is the best solution to lower your molding cost. Use our DFM service to optimize your design before tooling.
Undercuts Add Cost
4

Mold Life

Mold life affects mainly the tooling cost. Prototype molds use regular steels such as P20 or 718H. For production molds at higher volume, hardened steel would be required, like NAK 80 or H13.

H13
1,000,000+ shots
Production
NAK 80
500,000+ shots
Production
718H
300,000+ shots
Bridge
P20
100,000 shots
Prototype
Mold Life
5

Surface Finish

Mirror polishing adds cost to injection molding, which requires hardened steels (NAK 80 Steel) to create the molds and cleaner injection molding condition.

Also, a higher texturing requirement is another reason to cost increases. The finer the texture, the more precise the EDM process required.

Check our VDI 3400 Texture Card and SPI Surface Finish Card for surface finish standards and pricing reference.
Surface Finish

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