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Many don't exactly find injection molding interesting, let alone even know about. However, I've made it my personal goal to, at the very least, get people to begin started on the road towards finding out how things are made! One can easily forget that what they just bought at the store was in fact made by the inventions of people over several years as well as by the hands of specialists and people with a variety of expertise. In fact, this is so often overlooked that it can be pretty fascinating to learn all the ins and outs of plastic product manufacturing. Man and machine working together in order to make it easier on the population. It's really a beautiful thing to watch and while researching and working alongside specialists in the industry, I've grown to actually respect them for their hard work and dedication. They're responsible for so many plastic products and byproducts that have been in use for years, and will be in use for years to come.

In the future, I intend to write essays in length about the process, but for now I think a simple overview is in order. This is to ease you into the injection molding process, so that you don't get too quickly confused or overloaded. Injection molding (unlike the name implies) is not actually a complicated thing to do. With the help of a machine and a number of trained specialists, thermoplastic and thermosetting plastic is heated to a liquid, and then shaped to a specified product.

Now, let's get into the history of the process. So many things happened over the 1800's and 1900's in order to get where we are in the process today. A number of people contributed to the development of injection molding and how to make the process quick and efficient. But let's start with plastic itself; in Britain in 1851, Alexander Parkes invented the first synthetic plastic.

Parkesine, as might be expected for what is essentially the first of its kind, had several faults. First of all, and really most importantly, Parkesine was highly flammable. This led to an incredible amount of risk for all those working on it. Moreover, the finished products were expensive, but flimsy, and were widely known to crack and break. Thankfully, In 1868, American John Wesley Hyatt improved Parkesine.

Hyatt's gave his plastic the title "celluloid," and it was an improvement in the sense that it was safer, more durable, and much less expensive. Injection molded products were more easily manipulated, thus allowing such a vast variety of products. In 1972, following his announcement of celluloid by four years, John and his brother Isaiah Hyatt joined forces to formulate the world's first injection molding machine. Plastic could now be easily shaped with the help of simple machinery (comparing to the sort of injection molding machines we use nowadays).

Following the introduction of Hyatt's injection molding machine, the industry rapidly grew. Now that the process of injection molding was really being set into play, new ideas and innovators were stepping up to the plate, ready to improve. Different versions of Hyatts' machines were made in order to produce different products, including collar clips, hair combs, and even buttons.

When the 1940's came around, and the World War II fever began to settle in, the demand for plastic products and byproducts surpassed anything the industry had known. Suddenly the machines weren't enough, it was hardly possible to cater to such a large population with such huge demands. However, in 1945, James Watson Hendry initiated the very first screw injection molding machine, and it revolutionized what we know about the process. No other machine of this kind had used a screw to facilitate the process, and specialists found that they had more control of the speed of injection, allowing more product!

It was also found out that since the screw was now mixing the molten plastic products, other things could be mixed in with it. By adding different dyes, all sorts of new colorful products could be made, expanding the industry exponentially. Even now, most molding machines use a type of screw. Hendry also worked for thirty more years and release a molding machine that applied the use of gas, hugely reducing the use of important resources and creating plastic molded parts.