
Circuit Break Podcast #134
Injection Molded Enclosure Design with John Teel
Related Topics
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This is the last installment of Stephen's 'Adventures in Injection Molding'. We are going to recap the entire two year sage and close the book on it.
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August 22, 2018, Episode #134
- John Teel
- Founder of Predictable Designs, a company which helps startups, makers, and small companies develop new electronic products
- Previously, John was on Episode 106 of the MacroFab Engineering Podcast where John spoke about making the product development process as predictable as possible
- Injection Molding Enclosure Design
- What is the general process of injection molding?
- Challenges of Injection Molding: Why does it have this “mystic” aura around it?
- Designing enclosures for injection molding?
- Difference between designing for 3D printing and Injection molding
- What should you look for if you need to get a design done correctly
- What files will I need to have created?
- Do I design the mold or does someone else?
- Design is done. Who do I look for to get my design built?
- What questions should I have answered before contacting someone?
- Who do I talk to to get it done?
- How do I find a manufacturer locally or overseas?
- Who owns the mold?
- Should I go with a more expensive/larger mold or cheaper/smaller?
- How much should I be prepared to spend?
- Prototyping
- TL;DR for prototyping an injection molded enclosure
- Protolabs online DFM
- What if I want a sample?
- How do I pick the right material?
- Protolabs online DFM
- TL;DR for prototyping an injection molded enclosure
Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes and please review us, wherever you listen (PodcastAddict, iTunes). It helps this show stay visible and helps new listeners find us.

Injection molding machine.

Molds for use in the injection molding process.

John Teel of Predictable Designs.
About the Hosts

Parker Dillmann
Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.
In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.
In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.
Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.

Stephen Kraig
Stephen Kraig began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
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Connector Catalogs
This is the last installment of Stephen's 'Adventures in Injection Molding'. We are going to recap the entire two year sage and close the book on it.

John Teel of Predictable Designs
Guest John Teel talks about how to make new hardware projects more predictable for manufacturing.