Injection moulding is the dominant high-volume plastic-manufacturing process. Molten plastic is forced under pressure into a precision-cut steel mould; the plastic cools in seconds; the part is ejected; the cycle repeats for tens of thousands of units before the mould wears out.
How it differs from 3D printing
| Injection moulding | 3D printing (FDM) | |
|---|---|---|
| Cycle time | Seconds per part | Hours per part |
| Setup cost | £10,000–£100,000 per mould | ~£0 (CAD file only) |
| Sweet spot | 10,000+ units of one part | 1 to 1,000 units of any part |
| Geometry | Constrained by mould-release angles | Almost any shape |
| Materials | Most engineering plastics | Smaller subset (PLA, PETG, ABS, TPU) |
Why it dominates cheap trays
The drawer-tray market is volume-dominated. A single injection-moulded ABS tray sized for the assumed-standard 35 cm drawer might sell tens of thousands of units a year. The mould pays back over the first few thousand parts; every subsequent part costs pennies of plastic. The economics demand mass-volume, single-size tooling.
Why it fails to fit non-standard drawers
An injection mould produces one geometry. A new drawer size means a new mould. Tooling cost makes "sized to your drawer" structurally uneconomic in injection moulding. The category default — one size for everyone — falls out of the manufacturing process, not from a deliberate design decision.
Modu Drawer modules are FDM-printed precisely because the print-on-demand economics let the system size to the drawer, not the other way round.