Plastic Living Hinge

The history of the Living Hinge was started by the process of injection molding. Typically Living Hinge parts are small in size; clamshells for packaging, flip top cars ect. Material of choice was a polypropylene based material. In the Early 90's Spencer Industries produced it's first heavy gauge plastic Living Hinge product, a Camcorder Case.

This Camcorder Case was manufactured using the Twinsheet Thermoforming Methods.

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Today we have used plastic Living Hinges for Roll up Truck Doors, Toolbox Lids, Battery Access Panels, and Access Storage Boxes.

A living hinge is a flexible hinge made from thermalplastic polyolefin (TPO). Think of the hinge on a Tic-Tac candy box opening, but on a much larger scale. The hinge joins two rigid plastic parts together, and allows them to bend along where the 2 parts meet. This is typically done using an injection molded method, but we have been able to reproduce this using Thermoforming Twinsheet Methods.

Why is thermoforming better than injection?

Thermoforming a living hinge means that large parts can be formed with the ability to flex and bend. This could possibly eliminate the need to produce 2 separate parts, and would only require 1 part to be produced.

Advantages of a Thermoformed Living Hinge

1. Lower Tooling Cost
2. No Material Cost for Seperate Hinge
3. No Labor to assemble a seperate hinge
4. Small or Large parts can be Manufactured
5. Vertical or Horizontal hinges can be designed
6. 5000,000 + Cycle test with no failures

A Living Hinge could Reduce....

• Tooling
• Hardware Costs
• Assembly of Hardware
• CNC Trimming