During the more than 40 years the author has worked designing molds for plastics products, he has had many occasions to view and discuss product designs with their designers. Usually, the contact with the designer was established only after a purchase order for a mold had been placed to produce a certain product. In reviewing the supplied drawings, and occasionally models, many questions had to be answered before starting to design and build a practical mold, suitable for the plastic, for the requirements of the product, and for the planned production and mold life expectancy.
Many product designers have excellent ideas when coming up with new products and improvements to existing ones, but often they apply design principles similar to those they were familiar with and had used with other materials, such as steel, glass, and others. In discussions, the product designers often have been shown to lack even some of the most basic understanding of the principles of plastics molding and of the behavior of plastics, both during molding and after the product is finished.

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