1. Information from Customer：
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Customer’s needs: Develop a silicone bikini for toys they made
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Requirement: The bikini must completely cover the toy’s curve, and fit snugly on the toy without any gap.
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Infos customer can offer: Only a toy sample and a draft sketch for Bikini, no 3D drawing
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Product color： Color samples were offered by the customer
2. What we should prepare:
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3D drawing for bikini
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Silicone material selection
3. Silicone bikini development: full process record
3.1 Work out 3D drawing for bikini
With years of expertise, HB Silicone is one of the leading silicone rubber manufacturers in China. HB Silicone offers measuring-scan, product development, and mold manufacture services.
Our professional engineering team will work closely with the customer to create 3D drawings if you only have samples or napkin sketches. The team is highly skilled in designing, machining, and tool mold manufacturing.
They scanned the toy first to get a three-dimensional of it, then design the bikini based on the rough sketch customer offered together with the toy drawing they scanned. 3D filetype in “Step” or “IGS” was worked out for future tool mold processing.
3.2 Design for Manufacturability
Customer First is our principle of service. We will try our best to ensure all their product needs will be met. Sometimes customers offer their drawings that are perfectly designed, but, parts of the design are not feasible for our tool mold manufacturing or mass production.
Our engineers will review all drawings carefully for ease of manufacturability, and offer the suggestion to make small amendments to drawings. This amendment won’t change the customer’s design concept but be more workable for production.
We then send the customer the 3D drawing as well as PDF files of the bikini for the customer’s confirmation. Two days later, we got customer approval and instruction on prototype production.
3.3 Rapid prototyping
Our in-house tooling shop with advanced CNC machines and milling machines allows us complete control over mold tool manufacturing process. A bikini sample tool mold with only one cavity finished in 4 days. Then we arrange prototype production.
3.4 Material selection and color matching
During the tool mold process, we make preparation for samples at the same time.
One is the material selection, though the customer had no special requirement on raw silicone material, we must take it seriously.
Considering the customer’s requirement of fitting snugly on the toy, and the operation of putting a bikini on the toy, we think a high-tensile strength silicone in lower hardness will be better.
Because the bikini will be stretched very long so as to put on the toy, the silicone must be in high-tensile strength to stretch long without deformation or break, the softer silicone has better extensibility and is more sticky. So we choose one high-strength silicone in 30 Shore A.
Another is color matching. We mixed colors according to the color samples customers offered.
3.5 Prototype test and confirm
We made prototypes and test them with the toy, founding that the bikini may be a little small. We took photos and report the feedback to our customer and sent prototypes to the customer as required.
5 days later, the customer got our sample and gave us feedback. They thought the shoulder and neck should be higher, the shoulder strap need be wider. Others are fine.
3.6 Part re-design, 2nd prototype
Our engineer revised the drawing based on the customer’s feedback. A new tool mold was made again as we can’t make Changement on the original mold. A prototype was made again and sent for confirmation, this time, the customer was satisfied with them.
Our in-house mold design & manufacturing to help a lot to streamline the product development process, and save much time during the prototyping stage.
3.7 Production tool mold manufacturing
Once the prototype was confirmed, we went on with production tool mold manufacturing, it is a copy of the sample tool mold but with 8 cavities. It is for mass production.
3.8 Mass molding production and delivery
The quality standard was confirmed during the prototype stage, production quality control will be carried out based on the standard agreed upon. The bikinis were inspected and packed, then delivered to the customer.
The whole process finished. The cooperation was satisfying, the customer then sent us more models to develop.
Suggestions: Silicone development sometimes is not that complex. For this kind of assembly accessories, better to offer all related parts info to us, it will help our engineer to design the product more precisely, especially for those functional parts. The more detailed information you offer, the higher the success rate, and the less time wasted.
About HB Silicone :
15 years of experience in CNC mold making and custom molded silicone products.
R&D Support (Custom products design, 3D files)
CNC tool mold design and process (Programming, mold making)
Silicone Molding Production (High Volume Production, Quality Control)
Customers who want to develop custom silicone products are welcome to contact us at :
