switchplate covers

Our first attempt at making switchplate covers was an attempt to save money. It was lower in cost, but it didn't result in a useable product.

 One of the challenges that we have with recycled plastic is the longevity issue. Here in the US, we tend to view anything made of plastic as disposable... "use one time, throw away! (Which is a direct quote from a very old Chinese man my mom was talking to in Malaysia in 1973, but that's another story.) To put it another way, we are constantly asking ourselves, "what can we make that isn't going to be tossed into a landfill?" 

That's why we settled on the idea of switchplate covers made from recycled plastic. Once these are installed, they tend to stay in your house for a very long time.

But like most things, coming up with the idea is the easy part... executing is more difficult.

Our first attempt at switchplate covers involved a three-piece "sandwich" mold, laser cut from SendCutSend. In short, it didn't work. (It wasn't their fault, their parts arrived exactly as specified... the problem was with my design.) The finished result was sized correctly, but far too crude in appearance to be actually used. This was a mold-making job for the pros.


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The pros, in this case, live just outside of London, England. We have bought several molds from Sustainable Design Studios, who also supplied our two Injection Mini machines. We bought our first machine assembled, which was a mistake in retrospect. In overseas shipping terms, the assembled machine is fairly large and heavy, and our machine must have been dropped in transit. So I had to take the thing halfway apart and re-assemble, which took almost as much time as building from scratch... which is exactly what we did for our second machine. We bought the kit (more about the build process is coming soon)- but I digress.

We got in touch with Rory Dickens at SDS about designing a mold for us. We sent over a standard US-style switchplate so that he could take off exact measurements. After some time, he returned three 3D-printed examples- one percent undersize, one percent oversize, and one actual size. This was to allow for shrinkage of the plastic. All three worked, but the actual size print seemed to be the best fit, so we gave him the go-ahead to cut the mold.

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Our early attempts at switchplate covers weren't viable at all

The new mold design by Rory Dickens

Some completed switchplates

Some months later, we received our mold. To say that I was impressed is putting it mildly... it's a beautifully-made, nicely-finished, expensive chunk of aluminum. After a few tries to get the temperatures and pre-heating requirements dialed in, we started to produce switchplates. That's when we learned that this product is an especially good fit for our Injection Mini. Rory's design is especially quick to use. The finished product clears the mold easily, so we can inject the plastic and clear the mold in about 60-90 seconds. 

And the finished product looks great. There's almost no flash to clean up, and the sprue is removed with two snips with a flush cutter. We make these with colors, as well as straight white and black. All look good. Early sales are indicating that these will be a fairly popular product... so much so that we've already contacted Rory about making another mold for us- this time, a matching outlet cover. 

We will need to sell a lot of these to recover the investment in the mold, but I believe it'll work. It was expensive, and it did take quite a while to get the project done. But it's a great fit to our core mission, which is to keep plastic out of the landfill.

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