You have developed a new product design for an aluminum part. Let’s say you have gone over the engineering drawings carefully and you even have a nice prototype in hand so you know your part looks and performs the way you want it to. When you’re satisfied with your design, the next step when preparing for regular volume production is to invest in a custom mold. 

At this point you need to consider a few options: do you want a single cavity tool or a multi-cavity one? What’s the difference and how do you know which is going to give you the best results? To help you decide, we offer this engineering overview of the pros and cons of each.

Let’s start with a single cavity. This type of injection mold tool is the easiest and fastest to make since there’s less raw material that needs to be machined. Also, it’s usually easier to design the other features of the mold such as the gates and runners, ejector pin locations, cooling channels, sliders, etc. A few more advantages to consider single cavity tools are easier and less costly to repair should damage occur, as it sometimes does when a tool begins to wear out. And finally, single cavities work well for larger and more complex parts, especially those that don’t need to mate with their mirror image,