Do you know how we get many of the complicated plastic items that make our lives safer, more hygienic and much more convenient? Many of them are formed by a process known as plastic injection molding. This is a manufacturing method that has been in use, in one form or another, since 1872. Since then, the process has been refined to make it more efficient and to enable manufacturers to use different types of plastics that have different qualities. When plastic is melted it can be molded into a variety of different shapes as it is extremely malleable. However, manufacturers needed to find a way that melted plastic could be forced into a mold in order to shape it into three dimensional shapes. It was for this reason that the first injection molds were developed .