Rule of Thumb for Plastic Part Design: The Rule of 10 in Part Costs

Hello and welcome to a new Rule of Thumb post. Today we discuss the rule of 10 in context of the Polymer Product Pentagram.

Uncovering mistakes during or after the plastic design and production phase leads to high fixing costs in return. The fixing costs are described by Mr. Anderson in his publication as “The Rule of 10” [2]: when costs are discovered in the next design phase, they increase with the factor 10.

Let us now apply the rule of 10 to our Polymer Product Pentagram [1]:

Polymer Product Pentagram 

In case one needs to re-select another polymer, costs will increase by 10. If the part design and polymer selection stage are approved, however a mistake was made in mould design and construction, then costs are up by a factor 100 already.

Altogether, it does not need to be exactly 10. In one's particular case it may be 6 or 8, which is still a high number.

Thank you for reading and #findoutaboutplastics

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Herwig Juster 

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 [1] Polymer Product Pentagram: https://www.findoutaboutplastics.com/2021/01/rule-of-thumb-for-polymer-engineering.html

[2] The Rule of 10: https://articles.bplans.com/the-rule-of-10-for-product-design/