A low cost and practical infrared rapid surface heating system for injection molding is designed and investigated. The system was designed to assemble on the mold and a control system was used to operate the motion of the lamp holder. Four infrared halogen lamps (1 kW each) were used as the radiative source to heat the surface of mold insert. The temperature increase is verified on the mold plate with a thermal video system. Two types of specular reflectors combined with different bulb configurations were applied to study the heating ability of radiation heating. A modified spiral flow mold was used to test the enhancing filling ability of the rapid surface heating system. Three resins, PP, PMMA and PC were molded in the spiral flow injection molding experiments. If spherical reflector and centralized lamp configuration are used, the temperature at the center of the mold surface is the highest. The temperature of mold center surface is raised from 83 degrees C to 188 degrees C with 15 s of infrared heating. Because the surface temperature of the mold insert is higher than the glass transition temperature of resins before fining, the flow distance of resins in the modified spiral flow mold will be increased. The location effect of the infrared surface heating system on a thin-long cavity was studied to demonstrate the possibility of using smaller infrared heating area on a large mold surface. A microprobe cavity also demonstrated that with the assistance of infrared heating technology the formability of a microprobe can be greatly improved. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.