Injection molding, also known as injection molding, is a common production method for plastic products. It's applicable to all thermoplastics and some thermosets. This highly efficient production method requires the mold, and its essential tool is the injection mold. Injection mold processing directly impacts product quality and production efficiency. So, do you know the steps involved in making an injection mold? HUIWEN Plastics summarizes the following points:
1. Analyze the Plastic Product's Process
Before designing the mold, it's important to discuss the details of the plastic product's process with the client, including requirements for the product's geometry, dimensional accuracy, and appearance. This communication minimizes unnecessary complexity during mold manufacturing.
2. Mold Structure Design
While meeting the client's requirements, ensure low processing costs, minimal processing difficulty, and short processing time. This requires a sound mold design. This requires not only careful consideration of the client's needs but also a thorough understanding of the injection molding machine, mold structure, processing technology, and the mold manufacturer's own capabilities. Therefore, to improve mold design, the following points should be achieved:
1. Understand every detail of each mold design and the purpose of each mold component.
2. Refer to previous similar designs and learn from their experiences and lessons when designing.
3. Communicate frequently with experienced craftspeople to learn from their experiences.
4. "There are experts on site"—observe plastic mold processing operations and understand the characteristics and limitations of each process.
5. Understand the mold trial results and mold modifications of your own molds and learn from the lessons learned.
6. Utilize previously successful mold structures when designing.
7. Research special mold structures and learn about new mold technologies.
III. Procuring Mold Materials
When selecting mold materials, in addition to considering product precision and quality, the mold manufacturer's processing and heat treatment capabilities should also be considered. Additionally, to shorten the manufacturing cycle, existing standard parts should be utilized whenever possible.
IV. Part Processing and Mold Assembly
Beyond optimizing the design and ensuring reasonable tolerances, part processing and mold assembly are crucial to mold precision. Therefore, machining accuracy and the choice of machining method play a dominant role in mold manufacturing.
To reduce mold manufacturing errors, machining accuracy must be improved first. Furthermore, to prevent errors caused by mold wear and deformation, key components such as the cavity and core should be quenched for molds with high machining accuracy requirements and high product production. For medium- and large-sized molds, a patchwork structure should be used whenever possible during mold design to save material and facilitate machining and heat treatment.
To address errors caused by uneven shrinkage of molded parts and discrepancies between expected and actual shrinkage, a manufacturing tolerance of 1/3 of the product tolerance is generally used during mold manufacturing. This allows for greater margin for adjustment during the subsequent molding process to account for errors introduced during the molding process.
V. Mold Trial and Modification.
From design to assembly, a mold only completes 70% to 80% of the entire manufacturing process. Errors caused by the inconsistency between the expected shrinkage and the actual shrinkage, whether the demoulding is smooth or not, the cooling effect, and especially the impact of the gate size, position, and shape on the product precision and appearance must be tested through mold trials. If problems are found during the mold trials, they will be confirmed and modified with the customer in a timely manner.
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