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Designers who would like to incorporate 2-shot component designs into their products often find the high cost of tooling forces them to abandon their 2-shot ideas. High tooling cost is due in part to the complexity of rotating the mold in the 2-shot molding machine.

Because of added mold complexity, tooling costs for two-shot injection molded parts are inherently higher than single shot, single material parts. The higher cost often prevents design engineers from pursing two-shot parts.

Two-shot molding requires two different sets of cavities and cores (cavity sets), therefore doubling the cost of those mold components. A mold producing four parts every shot requires eight cavity sets. The cost for doubling cavity sets cannot be avoided for two-shot molding.

Two-shot molding also requires special mold bases which can be rotated in the molding machine. Rotation is required to align the cavity sets for the first and second shots with the machines first and second shot injection barrels.

Two-shot machines come in a wide variety of physical configurations so the location and dimensional spacing of the two injection barrels varies widely. Because of this, the use of "universal mold bases" (common mold bases used for a variety of different parts), are not typically available for two-shot molding. Universal mold bases have been used for decades to produce single-shot parts where tooling dollars cannot justify a mold base dedicated for the part.

Rogan Corporation has developed a series of universal two-shot mold bases sized to their machines. This capability allows customers to develop two-shot parts while avoiding the cost of the mold base and frame. This allows customers to limit their tooling investment to cores and cavities only, lowering the customer's tooling investment by 25% to 50%. Rogan calls this uncommon capability their "universalBASE" program. While the use of standardized mold bases for single shot parts has been around for decades, it is not widely available for 2-shot molding.

Reasons to make use of two-shot universal mold bases include:

• Limited unit volumes that do not justify larger tooling investments
• Pre-production pilot runs or production ramp-ups prior to larger tooling investments
• Shortened time-to-market by focusing on cavity sets only
• Limited tooling dollars available for a project.

Rogan Corporation (Northbrook, IL) has been producing two-shot parts for more than twenty years. They specialize in multi-material plastic molding and work with a wide range of engineered resigns from ergonomic "SoftTouch" thermoplastic elastomers to rugged, high-impact polymers.